Canada has implemented a new tax savings from December to February for some things like taxable groceries, crafts, and gaming physical media. I wanted to get a new Xbox controller and found the best price at Walmart for $55 a week ago. The tax holiday starts today and I now see that the $55 has increased to $62 and change, which is about how much tax I should be saving. Great to see this thinly veiled attempt to help Canadians ( /s - win votes) is just going to be extra profit in the corporations’ pockets.
See, trickle down economics works ladies and gents /s
That’s not really relevant. A break in sales tax that just targets consumer necessities should be a progressive tax.
The problem is that a lack of competition in this country means that grocers can raise their prices with no fear of losing customers
It doesn’t matter how much competition there is of they’re all going to do it anyway.
It does. Competition is literally the only mechanism that drives greedy actors to lower prices or improve their service. Without competition they hoarde.
Fuck this is gold.
Well, unless people realise the actual worth of gold… But until then.
How would trickle down work with gold? I’m picturing some kind of golden shower?
That’s probably illegal.
It is in the US.
The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing generally require that a seller offer an item at a price for a reasonable, substantial period of time in good faith, and in the regular course of business, before advertising that price as the former or regular price (16 C.F.R. § 233.1). The FTC considers it deceptive to offer an item for sale at a higher price for a short period of time in order to support a claim that an item is discounted when the price is then lowered. This practice is prohibited.
Additionally, most states have consumer protection statutes that prohibit sellers from making false or misleading statements of fact concerning the reasons for, existence of, or amount of a price reduction (for example, Cal. Civ. Code § 1770(a)(13)). Several states also expressly regulate the length of time an item must be offered at a regular price and amount of time it is on sale (for more information, see Practice Notes, Promotional Pricing: Specific State Laws and “Up To” Discounting Law and Practice: Promotional Pricing: State-by-State Requirements).
From here
tell that to amazon and every other retailer that jacks prices up the week or so before a ‘sale’
For Amazon, I use camelcamelcamel to see price history. Personally I’ve not seen price increases just for holiday sales but I also don’t buy a lot of stuff on these sorts of days, I just set a price alert and wait for the email.
The price hike in Canada’s instance, wouldn’t violate US law.
They aren’t advertising a “sale”. You just aren’t paying taxes on what you buy, and it isn’t wal mart doing it, it’s the government. Wal mart is just choosing to screw over the buyers and the government all in one go.
Report them
Report them
How?
I have not been able to find anything about restrictions to stop the price gouging.
All prices are set based on what consumers are willing to pay.
The only way prices ever go down is by exercising a decision not to buy something or to go somewhere for an item.
It will not come from the government, unless the government mandates a specific rate.
Well the government can break up corporations which results in more competition. They can also enforce standards which also allows more competition. This gives people more options so they can’t just set prices in a monopolistic way.
Unfortunately there’s not much the Canadian government can do about Walmart and Microsoft as they aren’t Canadian companies. And Kamala’s opportunity economy has been cancelled so it doesn’t look there’s going to be any positive change in the US for foreseeable future.
But they could break up Loblaw’s at least.
They can absolutely tell Walmart they have to reduce their footprint or break up in Canada. They don’t lose their sovereignty just because it’s an American Corporation. If they think Walmart is using global profits to unduly influence Canadian markets they can introduce a tax or even ban them.
This is why sales tax is silly unless it’s purposefully punitive. Like with cigarettes.
If they want to give back to consumers, then literally give money to consumers.
I think it depends on the area. Places like Florida did well with sales taxes because they have large amounts of tourism. So they can have no state income tax, and no tax on groceries, yet make enough in taxes to do everything else they need. That said, sales tax is 6% from the state, and areas boost it based on other needs. .5% for teachers and .5% for local infrastructure was what I grew up with.
Now living in Tennessee taxes are 10% and they charge it on groceries here… which kind of sucks. I wish stores would just include the tax on the sticker. When running on a budget I really don’t want to be saying 6.99 okay that’s 7.69 in my head and have to keep track while figuring out what I can afford to eat that week.
If the controller was $55 yesterday and $62 today there would definitely be shenanigans, but a week ago? It could just be that a sale ended since you last looked.
Anyway, I don’t see $62 Xbox controllers on their site, checking from Nova Scotia. Official controllers are the usual $70-something and there’s PowerA brand for $55.
They are ridiculously expensive to begin with, thus my waiting for a special occasion to spend that much money to get a first-party one. Here it is, probably priced lower than the others because of the ugly colour that I kind of like.
That controller is the same price on Amazon, and Camelcamelcamel shows it went up to that on Dec 6, Friday of last week. It was probably the same with Walmart.
