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Canada To Stop Producing Pennies In 2013
First time accepted submitter master_kaos writes "Canada is going to stop producing pennies in February 2013 to help save the tax payers $11 million per year. Cash transactions will be rounded to the nearest nickel. Cheque/Credit Card transactions are not affected."
Now we can just keep around stacks of cheques for one to four cents, and deliver to shopkeepers as needed.
...but honestly, I doubt the penny will vanish for another couple of years. Coin jars, coin jars everywhere.
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Up or Down in the customer's favor?
Late 80's, on european bases. Round up or down to the nearest 5 cent increment. Worked like a charm. The only place pennies were taken was the Post Office.
I have wondered for years how long it would take us Canadians to finally get rid of that awful piece of currency. Especially given that it takes more money to produce it than it is actually worth. No one can buy anything with pennies anymore and they really are nothing more than just metal wasting space. Plus, vending machines have never taken them which has made them even more useless than before.
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
The Mint stopped making new pennies last May (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/05/04/mb-canada-last-penny-mint.html). But they are still in circulation. What happens on February 4th is the Mint stops putting pennies it gets back into circulation. What is unclear is when exactly stores will be required to stop giving pennies out.
Serve Gonk.
China and India are both transforming their economies to be more like the west, creating a larger middle class in those countries. A larger middle class wants bigger and better housing. With China and India making up almost 4 billion people together, that is a lot of new housing, and a lot of copper that needs to go into making those houses. Supply of copper has not been able to keep up with demand. How do you expect prices of copper to stay low if the demand shoots through the roof for copper and supply does not grow accordingly?
Since when has a low inflation rate been a bad thing?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I dont know of anyone who pretends inflation doesnt exist.
There hasn't been any significant copper in a canadian penny since 1996.
94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper (as plating)
A big problem is that the penny is just useless. Nobody uses them, except maybe a handful of annoying old grannies who take 25 minutes to buy a cup of coffee.
So, they just get tossed into coin jars. Since they disappear from circulation almost immediately, and the government is (was) minting increasing amounts to make up for this. They don't get used either, just tossed into coin jars.
Those old copper pennies, from pre 1996, are worth ~2 cents, but the value of copper fluctuates pretty wildly.
The fact that there is such a thing as inflation is no shock to anybody, and not really a part of this story.
We still have 9 tenths of a cent per gallon on USA gasoline sales. Maybe we can look forward to rounding it to a penny.
Gently reply
I get it the currency has lost value, just move the decimal point.
I really doubt this will happen. For the 3 to 4 cents you might gain it is just not worth the risk that someone might pull out their phone, calculate it and throw a major fit in your store. Even if no one ever throws a fit, word will get around, (See internet) and people will simply not shop at retailers who do this.
I usually have very little faith in people, but in this case I will tend to believe in honesty.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Neither. To the *nearest* 5 cent increment, be it up or down.
,1.01, 1.02 = $1.00
Let's assume the transaction is right around $1:
0.98, 0.99, 1.00
1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06, 1.07 = $1.05
1.08, 1.09, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12 = $1.10
It ends up working pretty evenly.
Well, since most pay raises many of us have seen over the last few years are below inflation, lots of employers are pretending it doesn't exist for their staff.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Large stores will get a non taxable "profit" from raising to the nearest nickel, small ones probably will get some loss from raising to the lowest nickel.
How so? The entire transaction is rounded up or down, to the nearest nickel. If you buy more than one item, that screws the 1 or 2 cent price fixing scheme.
Sensible merchants would just use divisible-by-5 prices to avoid issues with rounding.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
while it is entirely conceivable (and probable to occur) to rig prices to always cause a round-up, even with taxes... that really only applies for single item purchases where the final price can be exactly determined.. and then it's only for the cash transactions. overall, that combination of a single item and cash sale is probably pretty small. multiple item purchases will balance out, as their totals and whether they will round up or down can't reliably be determined ahead of time. and of course, non-cash transactions are unaffected.
and there really isn't a point to rounding the prices on the shelf... except at places that actually manually key each price on the register (no automated scanner or simple item/sku to key in). all but the very smallest retail stores have bar code scanners. and consider that prices rounded to the nickel, when taxes are added.. probably won't end up ending in a 5 either.
if a store really wanted to reduce the small change handling of cash transactions.. AND they primarily sold non-taxed goods, they'd be better off with 10c increments up to $2-3 prices then 25c increments after (then 50c over $10 and a dollar for over $20). but how many stores do a high percentage of untaxed, cash sales?
That might work in Europe, where the prices all include VAT already, but I thought Canada was like the US and added their sales tax on top of the listed price.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
No Sensible merchants will use prices where the rounding is their favor. 9.96 looks like a better price than 10.00 but with the rounding it will be the same.
At current exchange rates, an American penny costs less than 0.99 Canadian cents.
According to this link, the U.S. is going to stop producing pennies and nickels in 2013.
Though I'm not sure how much faith one can put into this article. I've tried looking for more concrete news about this, but I have yet to turn up anything. Anybody else hear about this?
The US has pennies only because of lobbying from the zinc industry. The U.S. Mint pays $0.011 for a penny blank.
When I was in Australia in the '90s, they had already eliminated their coins smaller than 5 cents, and the common practice was to always round down cash transactions. So, if your total was $1.99 and you paid with cash, you'd only get charged $1.95. If you paid with EFTPOS (debit card) or a credit card, you'd be charged the full $1.99.
There's nothing to stop them from doing that now... If the market will support it, they'll raise prices. Just like now...
I don't get it. I sell things. You sell things. Everyone rounds to nickels unless the transaction isn't using hard currency. Who is losing money?
Bad math in first post.
9.95 == 9.95
9.96 == 9.95
9.97 == 9.95
9.98 == 10.00
9.99 == 10.00
10.00 == 10.00
Not when the merchant sets the price.
Yes, when I can buy more than one item at a time. The rounding is on the entire transaction.
If the customer can buy 3 or more random items at a time, please demonstrate a pricing scheme that would consistently cause the customer to pay an extra $0.02.
Yes. Because they'll always be able to set the prices so that regardless of how many items you buy, the final total mod .05 will always be .01 or .02.
Oh, wait. No. That's impossible.
Jackass.
Sensible merchants would just use divisible-by-5 prices to avoid issues with rounding.
This doesn't always work. A common example where it doesn't work is grocery stores where certain items are sold by weight.
I think the more important question, brought to my mind by the Death to Pennies video, is whether they'll round in all cases or just when paying with cash. There's obviously no need to round if you're using a debit or credit card.
The video makes the very informative point that when you're fiddling around with actual physical pennies at the register you're wasting not only your own time, but the time of everyone in line behind you. The difference of plus or minus a couple pennies literally isn't worth the time spent dealing with them for most people, even without counting the accumulated time you're costing everyone else. I believe it was estimated that the lost opportunity cost was at _least_ an order of magnitude larger than the loss from minting the pennies.
Which means that even if stores _always_ rounded up (which they're not actually doing) you'd _still_ come out ahead in the long run just from the time you saved.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Pay with a credit card then.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Does the law cover that? If not then marketers can still sell things for 9.99. If you buy 5 items at 9.99 then the total comes to 49.95. You buy 4 items and then buy 1 item later you bill comes to 50.00.
Making savings absolutely worthless for hundreds of years. The fact pennies are disappearing should cause concern - your money is worthless.
The 1 cent (and 2 cent) has been abolished in quite a few countries with a currency value comparable to the dollar. They still price items at $x.99, and will round down if you buy enough that it ends up as $x.x6 or $x.x7
Right now a cashier takes his/her cash box to accounting which verifies the amount of money in the cash box is identical to the cash register tape. This will mess this up (although the newer machines with programming may be able to be re-programmed to calculate this correctly--anyone know?)
Why the transaction will ALWAYS be in the merchant's favor of course!
Depends. I suspect that "We always round cash down!!" will be plastered in quite a few front windows to try to attract customers. Of course it's easy for merchants to game the original price so this always works out in their favor. Depending on how much the CC companies are gouging the merchant, always rounding in the customer's favor might actually save both the customer and merchant money if more people pay cash.
In any case, I wouldn't really care. Given the amount of cash transactions I make every year, even if they cheated and rounded .01 up to .05 every time, my maximum yearly exposure would be about... $1? Maybe 2?
I hate pennies .. they are evil and need to be banished from the earth. But Americans would scream blue murder if the gubmint tried to take their precious away.
But the funny/bizarre thing is that the US public has already been conditioned to rounding the bill through the use of the give/take-a-penny trays in innumerable stores across the country.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
it is just not worth the risk that someone might pull out their phone, calculate it ...
I have no idea what the antecedent for "it" is here. Calculate what? The price rounded down? How many people will need a smartphone to calculate a rounded-to-a-nickel price? Not many.
...and people will simply not shop at retailers who do this.
People will get over this pretty quickly, if they even notice the two or three cent price increase on every product that is currently ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7. People who buy 10 widgets that used to cost $0.67 and is changed to $0.69 will pay twenty cents more overall. Everyone who buys just one will pay three cents more than they did before. Two results in a four cent increase. Three will result in a pre-rounding price of $2.07, which rounds down to $2.05, but is still four cents more than they would have paid before.
Applied to an economy as a whole, this can quickly add up to $11 million. But it's Canada, so maybe it will only be a few dollars.
I usually have very little faith in people, but in this case I will tend to believe in honesty.
Whose "honesty" are you believing in? The people who won't notice the change, or will get over it pretty quickly, or the stores who have the right to change prices when they need to?
I honestly don't think it's that big of a deal. Remember, you've got a minimum of 5% tax on most items as well. Here in Ontario, it's 13%. Depending on the pricing, that could affect the rounding, especially when you have multiple items. And it's a maximum difference of $0.02 on the entire transaction.
In addition, it's only for cash transactions. Most of the people I know (myself included) use some form of digital transactions (debit/credit) to pay for things. There are very few locations in Canada that only accept cash.
India and China don't even total 3 billion people together.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
That only works if there is no sales tax.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Not necessarily. In Finland they did the rounding too and I would sometimes get things rounded in my favor (not sure if Swedish rounding used). However the majority of the time with prepackaged goods the prices were pre-rounded anyway (and included tax). So the rounding that I noticed only came when buying something that had to be weighed.
Consider it this way. What do the stores do today if the actual price ends up with a fractional part of a penny left over? Is it rounded in your favor or towards the store's favor? Do you even care about 0.371 of a penny? So why is it a big deal when it's a fraction of a nickel?
I don't get it. I sell things. You sell things. Everyone rounds to nickels unless the transaction isn't using hard currency. Who is losing money?
You sell something for [insert-your-favorite-currnecy-here]1.996. Customer pays 2.00, you can't give 0.004 back. Customer decides it's ok.
Now repeat it a thousand times per day.
This is 0.004 * 1000 * 30 * 12 = 1440.00 per year.
Since you declared in the invoice 1.996, you pay the tax for 1.996. That 1440.00/year incoming is not taxed, and when correctly masked by a good accountant, it's plain, untaxable profit.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
It depends on what is causing the low inflation.
In America, right now, we have a huge overhang in housing, bad debt, and underemployed people. Because of low prices these things have been pulled from the market – but when prices go up these things pop back on the market driving prices back down. So, if you are trying to sell your house or your labor (or even trying to get a raise) it’s tough.
Japan has been struggling with this for a better part of a decade now. The Fed, via QE, has been dumping massive amounts of currency (which is not the same thing as money) into the market should be causing inflation – but the overhang is absorbing it all.
While low inflation is a good thing today it indicating a anemic economy that is below it’s capacity.
You first.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Correct! It's closer to 2.5 billion combined.
It's not because of the costs associated with credit. Those were always a problem.
The change is some legislation enacted under Obama that makes it illegal for credit card companies to require merchants to charge the same price for both cash and credit purchases. Previously, stores would lose their ability to process credit cards at all if they added the credit fees into the price. That's no longer the case, which is why you're now seeing this change.
If they can set the prices, they can set their own rounding policy. Regardless of if they declare any transaction total ending with 0.01 or 0.02 will be rounded up,
The merchant can declare no such thing. Transactions ending in 1 or 2 round down to the 0. Ending in 6 or 7, down to the 5. Period, end of story.
And again, it is for the entire transaction. Over time, your personal purchases average out.
A Milford, Mass., man saved his pennies to pay off his mortgage--literally. He carted more than 62,000 pennies to the bank to make his last payment..
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/mass-man-pays-off-mortgage-pennies/story?id=16726959#.UOXt0m_aJ8E
it is just not worth the risk that someone might pull out their phone, calculate it ...
I have no idea what the antecedent for "it" is here. Calculate what? The price rounded down? How many people will need a smartphone to calculate a rounded-to-a-nickel price? Not many.
The need for calculation here is because we have a 13% "Harmonized Sales Tax" in Ontario, and various combinations of Federal and Provinical taxes across Canada depending on which province you're in. Thus, when you pick up a can of Pringles for $2.99, it really costs $3.38 after tax - which would round up to $3.40. If they mark the Pringles down to $2.97, after tax it's $3.36, which _should_ round to $3.35, but some retailers will try to charge $3.40 anyways, and blame the difference on "tax" - since the tax is _NEVER_ listed on price tags, without a calculator or a super math brain, you don't know how much the purchase is going to cost you. People already do the whole "calculate the tax and yell at the cashier if it's not right" thing, and there are merchants here (like the gas station nearest my home) where the cashier/owner has a tendency to ring in the wrong prices, and blame it on "tax" when it doesn't match the sticker price. (Hint: $3 times 1.13 does not equal $4.)
Also, our taxes are never easy to multiply numbers... it's always 7%, 8%, 13%, and so on...
Ok then, do you want to make the case for me that 2.5 billion people going from poor to middle class will not use more resources, including copper?
You can declare on the invoice that it was 1.996, but on the receipt, after the sale, the amount will still say 2.00, as long as cash is being used.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The penny is just as pointless in the USA as it is in Canada. Of course, the USA is considerably behind Canada in recognizing the changes wrought by inflation. In addition to abolishing the penny, it should abolish the dollar bill and introduce a $2 coin as Canada did many years ago. (If you wanted to be really far-sighted, you could establish a plan for when to abolish the nickel and the $5 bill and introduce a $5 coin.)
Unfortunately, currency reform would not only face stiff opposition from the zinc lobby (because penny is largely zinc now), but from the politically well-connected Crane Company in Massachusetts, which manufactures all of the paper used in printing US currency. The absurdity of vending machines and tollbooths needing to accept paper money (much more expensive than coins) counts for nothing as against a corporation with skilled lobbyists.
But that's just my 2 cents.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I was correcting the statistic, not your assertion.
I agree that there are only so many resources to go around; consequently, prices will change based on the demand and availability of those resources until they reach an equilibrium. If there isn't enough copper *at all*, people will need to make due either without or with a substitute (or expensive reserves in the ground will be more appealing to dig up).
You are an idiot!
Next time know what you are talking about before you start typing.
From the Canadian mint website. The cost to phase out the penny is 37M, with as saving of 11M a year.
In only 4 years there is a profit.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Why not stop production of the nickel as well? Getting rid on one decimal point seems like would be easier. After a short time people would probably forget about that the second decimal point. And you would save the cost of producing the nickel as well.
Canadians want to do with the penny? This is yet another example of a government caving to the tyranny of inflated pocket change. And I'm sure the U.S. will be the next domino to fall. We know puppet autocrats in Washington have been in league with the evil Cabal of Paper Money (see their eye on top of the pyramid on a $1 bill) for centuries and shadow organization called "Amex" is trying to do away with decimals altogether. Living life in integers only is a planned conspiracy to strip God-fearing Americans of our copper-plated zinc liberties! If anything our government should begin re-minting what they illegally usurped from us in 1858 with the "retirement" of the half cent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cent_(United_States_coin) Our founding father, Abraham Lincoln, guaranteed us the penny denomination when his image was first struck in copper and his big house on the obverse....he's rolling over in his grave that he'll only be available to us on paper $5 bills! And this whole crazy notion of rounding to the hugely inflated nickel is just crazy talk. Jefferson used to teach us that if we saved enough Lincolns we could one day have the likeness of him in our pockets...and now he'd be the first increment on the fraction chart? He and his fancy pants are all bunged up in Monticello as we speak saying, "It's called 'penny candy'....not 'nickel candy'!" I say, "Nay!" Unless the government cushions this effrontery by, at the very least, reintroducing the three cent piece (perhaps with Ron Paul as the missing Founding Father on the back)....it will be just just one more case where our out-of-control government is stepping on our necks and depriving us of life, liberty, and useless small change. Demand re-minting of the Half Penny and Three Cent piece NOW! Call your legislator NOW!
Here in Norway we been doing this for years: - The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74 - The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84 - The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92 - The 50 øre coin was withdrawn May 1st last year. So while I can still recall putting a 5øre coin in my piggy-bank, there is now no coins circulating that is worth less than 1 Norwegian krone... but you know what? The wast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow, and the prices has not changed with the smaller coins going away. If you pay by card, you pay the exact amount. If you pay cash, it is rounded up or down to the nearest coin-value.
For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner is rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner is rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed. Off course it helps that the VAT is already added to the price listed - what you see is what you pay, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work equally well in places this isn't done (something which always boggles me when I'm visiting the US btw).
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I see nefarious developers for companies with limited oversight pulling an "Office Space" and truncating the remaining pennies rather than rounding up and depositing them into various accounts. I realize that is almost impossible to do without being caught, but I've seen Office Space too many times so that is the first thing that popped into my head...
This dreck is modded up to +5? Shame on you slashdot. This is Econ 101. If they could raise the price they already would have.
A store owner knowingly cheating on the final tally has nothing to do with this plan. It may offer him an extra avenue to cheat with, but he's doing it anyway.
...but some retailers will try to charge $3.40 anyways, and blame the difference on "tax"
...there are merchants here (like the gas station nearest my home) where the cashier/owner has a tendency to ring in the wrong prices
Question is: Why do you continue to patronize a merchant that knowingly, purposely cheats his customers?
[citation needed]
If you RTFA, you'll see that the Canadian Mint his issued rounding guidelines. 1c & 2c round down. 3c & 4c round up.
Whilst clearly a business could try to ignore that and always round up, they'd tend to lose more trade through bad feeling than they could ever make up in stealing pennies.
Answer is: I don't.
Don't you mean North Montana?
For any of you who are bent out of shape about having things rounded up by a penny or two - it just isn't worth discussing!
http://what-if.xkcd.com/22/
I wonder how much did it cost for the merchants to change their equipment to do this?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
How many people will need a smartphone to calculate a rounded-to-a-nickel price?
Most Americans. I'd give you an exact number, but I don't have my smartphone right now.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Who gets the remainder if it involves taxes? Here something that is $1.00 with 6% sales tax.. rounded to $1.05 Did the taxes just lose 1 cent?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
It's because different states and counties have different tax rates but the price of the item is the same nationwide and is used in nationwide advertising.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Still boggles and confuses me - as I'm sure it would anyone who are used to paying the amount listed. I know for a fact that a fair number of visiting Americans are boggled and confused by the fact that we're not adding a sales tax on top of the price during check-out... but they tend to agree it's convenient to do it our way. YMMV off course.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Once we default on the debt/print our way out, we can get rid of everything under $100 bill. Think of how much money we'll save.
1. The Currency Act already has provisions for jokers like you. The penny is not legal tender for a payment of over 25 cents. Similar limitations are in place for all coins.
2. Worn? You're talking about a steel disc. Pennies don't wear out, they get considered worthless and tossed in jars (or worse, the trash) and more need to be made to maintain its availability for circulation.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Australia got rid of 1 cent and 2 cent coins, and 5 cent coins are looking endangered. Nobody cares.
Retailers round the final total at the till, not the individual item prices, so unless you're just buying just one item your bill is just as likely to go down as up.(by a whole 2 cents maximum). Electronic transactions are not rounded.
We also replaced one dollar and two dollar notes with coins, again with no dramas.
Hopefully they will do like in Australia and have the till show if it rounded up or down. Mind you, knowing the government and human greed, I highly doubt it.
seems to have misplaced his
Yup. Gas stations have billed at 3 decimals (on a currency that only supports 2) for decades and society has not collapsed. So I'm thinking this is a soved problem.
C.G.P. Grey explains why here.
He also explains the penny death process in Canada here.
Sensible merchants would just use divisible-by-5 prices to avoid issues with rounding.
This doesn't always work. A common example where it doesn't work is grocery stores where certain items are sold by weight.
Prices are always rounded, whether it's to the nearest cent or to the nearest five cents. Sometimes you win a tiny bit, and sometimes you lose a tiny bit. On average it makes no difference, so long as the rounding unit is smaller than the cost of the item. And not many places keep items priced below 5c.
Is it worth it? Remember small-ish panic caused by the daylight saving change a few years ago (in the US anyway)? It was a mini-Y2K to make sure your systems were ready ... and some of ours weren't. If your cash registers aren't penny-less ready then you'll never balance your drawers (no childish jokes please :). $11 mill ain't gonna balance the budget and it may cost the business sector more than $11 mill to handle the change (no pun intended).
Is it worth it?
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Yeah, make everyone buy new cash registers, retrain employees, and get new software. That'll save a whole bunch of money...for the government.
If you have a choice as to whether to accept something as payment for a debt, that is by definition no longer legal tender.
AIUI generaly cash transactions in a store do not involve a debt to the store and therefore legal tender is not directly relevant.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I see a lot of people arguing about the value of the penny. Discussing whether it's worth more than a penny or less than a penny, etc. Truth is, I could care less. All I know is that it is a worthless coin, to a consumer. It is only taking up space in our pockets. Heck, it takes a hundred of them just to make one stinking dollar! No...Good riddance to the penny, I say. I'll gladly pay the (maximum) 4 cents per purchase, to not ever have to deal with a pocket full of useless coins, again (until we set our sights on the nickel, that is).
Cash registers are not going to show the rounded cost, there are going to show the actual cost. The rounding will be done manually IF you pay cash. The law stipulates rounding down for 1,2 and up for 3,4 cents.
Nothing changes except your change. The government collects the same taxes, the merchants balance sheet is the same, the ONLY change is the FEW cash transactions.
Anarchists never rule
The same legislation getting rid of the penny also makes rounding down on 1,2 cents the law. You may only round up on 3,4 cents. This only applies to CASH transactions.
Anarchists never rule
No. With cash transactions the common practice in Australia is to round to the nearest 5 cent increment, whether up or down. It's not that difficult to do though because the rounding's done by the cash register anyway.
Cogito, ergo sig.
$1 coins go in the car center console, and get used for car washes and parking.
$2 coins go in the tray on the dresser and get used for the morning Tim's.
Personally, if we had $5 coins they would be spent pretty much exactly the same way as $5 bills.
Nickels, dimes, pennies, quarters go in the pail. Once there are a few hundred dollars worth they get returned to the bank.
Pennies..? I didn't know Canada was still using British monetary units. I suppose the sixpence and shilling will be next to go..?
I thought Canada's primary monetary unit was called "dollars" and the secondary unit was "cents". ...Either that, or it's Canadian Tire Money, I forget which.
Note: The U.S. and Canada do not produce pennies at all(unless their mints are producing coins under contract for other countries that use such units). They produce one-cent coins called "cents". The Whitman "Red Book" wouldn't lie to me, would it? A "penny" is a British coin, originally worth 1/12 of a shilling, or 1/240th of a pound sterling. Since Great Britain changed over to a decimal currency, the "new" penny is a much smaller coin and worth 1/100th pound. The use of "penny" in the U.S. and Canada to refer to a one cent coin is technically just a common slang term.
OK, that all seemed a bit picky. But, hey, someone had to point it out...
Just thought I'd put in my two groats' worth.
The average McDonalds does 575,000 transactions per year. If they averaged $0.02 additional per transaction then that'd add up to $11,500, or 0.4% of their annual sales. Psychological pricing (e.g. 0.99 is cheap, 0.95 is higher quality) far outweighs any benefit from this sort of manipulation. (Realistically, they couldn't average anywhere close to $0.02 per transaction as it doesn't work mathematically.)
The parent said "businesses". So references to invitation to bargain miss the point- if a restaurant serves you a meal and can refuse pennies at the end, they're not legal tender.
About bloody time !
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
Throw in the fact taxes are added on top of the listed prices, and it really is a crapshoot that averages out over time.
Come to Alberta - no PST, so tax is a nice easy 5%
When NZ did this in the 1990's, they also made it law that stores that did not post a clear notice of their rounding policy at the cashier had to round everything down in favour of the customer. Most larger chains ended up doing the 1c & 2c round down, 3c and 4c round up, so that became the standard for a while until the 5c was also retired. If you let stores have any policy they like without making it public, you could end up with discriminatory practices, or in larger stores, cashiers skimming the pennies by always rounding up when the store's official policy is to round down.
How come it's "a penny for your thoughts" but you have to "put your own two cents in"? Somebody's making a penny...
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Some genius will just run a min/max and to find the best way of ensuring every purchase comes out to $x.x3 to round up :)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Or if you are sensible in how you calculate your prices...
I've seen a few retailers (extremely rare) that include the tax in their prices (very sensible) but I've also seen a fair number of retailers that have calculated their prices so that when you add tax the total always works out to a nice round number. (eg, in Alberta we have no provincial tax, only the federal GST of 5%, so a retailer that makes all their prices things like $0.95 or $0.96 after tax round to $1.00 and $9.52 or $9.53 after tax rounds to $10.00) It's nice in that customers aren't fiddling for change, and it probably makes their book keeping and coin handling much simpler too. (admittedly these are usually fast food kiosks where people pick from a relatively limited number of items, and where speed of the transaction is of paramount importance, so reducing awkward change is in the retailers best interest)
My cost of living increase was 1% over 5 years... the official cost of living index was significantly higher, and even that's been gamed to remove things that have gone up too fast (like fuel, and utilities, which make up a large portion of my costs)
I love corporate math....
Of course that would have been a much better solution than ditching the penny, they should have ditched the penny and the nickle and adjusted all prices by one decimal place. Start pricing things as $1.2 instead of $1.23 or $1.18 And just realize that nothing in society costs so little anymore as for that 2nd decimal place to truly be relevant (when we first started minting the penny, it actually bought things, now even the smallest purchase is bound to be at least $0.50 I'd think.)
2. Worn? You're talking about a steel disc. Pennies don't wear out, they get considered worthless and tossed in jars (or worse, the trash) and more need to be made to maintain its availability for circulation.
How many have gone up vacuum cleaners?
This is clearly an attempt to forestall the inevitable robot revolution which is being funded by 1 and 2 cent pieces sucked up by Roombas.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Large stores will get a non taxable "profit" from raising to the nearest nickel, small ones probably will get some loss from raising to the lowest nickel.
How so? The entire transaction is rounded up or down, to the nearest nickel. If you buy more than one item, that screws the 1 or 2 cent price fixing scheme.
Exactly, You have a can of cola priced at $0.43 at Bigmart and $0.47 at Smallway, A customer buying 2 pays $0.95 (rounded down by 1 cent) at Bigmart and 1.05 (rounded up by 1 cent) at Smallway. Anyone with half a brain knows how to get around pricing like this using odd and even volumes. In Australia, stores saw this immediately and just started pricing almost everything at $0.05 intervals (so "Only $0.99" became "Only $0.95").
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Even though the British pence is worth more than a US dollar cent, it still is practically worthless. The only decent reason I can see for keeping them around is for charities. I always put my coppers (not really copper any more, I know) in the nearest charity box if I can see one and usually bin them if not.
"But every penny saved...", I hear you say. Well it would require me to save three hundred pennies to gain as much as a solitary pint of beer (approximately £3). The effort in keeping coppers just isn't worth it any more. If I received 5 pennies per day and binned them all, it would cost me £18 per year. On a list of potential savings I could make, this would be in the "noise" category. I probably waste hundreds of pounds per year on not making pre-packed lunches.
The pennies are considered rude to give as tips, so you can't do that and so the only valid reason for me to keep pennies around is to avoid receiving more of them. If you have 2 pence on you and you're purchasing something costing £7.02 you could always give the cashier £10 and 2 pence to avoid receiving more pennies. The problem is that people are so bad at mental arithmetic these days they spend ages trying to figure out why you gave them 2 pence.
I would be delighted if the UK got rid of the coppers. Norway got rid of the equivalent (10 oere and 25 oere) two decades ago and are now getting rid of the approximate equivalent of the 5 pence coin (50 oere). Sentimentality is not a good reason to keep coins around. You probably spend more energy in dealing with these pennies and carrying them around than you get from saving them.
Wait... am I still on Slashdot?
I remember when Italy ran out of small change in the 1970s (I think the coins were worth more than their value as scrap metal, with the obvious result). Shops would give you sweets in place of small change. Seemed to work quite well.
Many small businesses have effectively "eliminated" pennies with a small container at the cash that contains pennies. Need a few pennies, take them from the container. Received a few pennies in your change? Drop them in the container. I don't think I've had pennies in my pocket for a long time. Government is finally just catching up.
What's a nickel?
Not all of us live in Canada, and all I've found it to be is an element, an ugly chick, and some ancient coins that vary between $0.03 and $0.05.
Corrupt politicians are promoting corruption for decades and the society didn't collapsed neither. Problem solved?
Tax evasion is tax evasion. It should be prevented, if only for principle. The law should be for everyone, or I wrong?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
You can declare on the invoice that it was 1.996, but on the receipt, after the sale, the amount will still say 2.00, as long as cash is being used.
The sales tax is issued over the invoice, or over the receipt?
As far as I know, the receipt proves the value paid, to be used in the event of a refund. The taxes are figured out over the invoices...
(of course, this can vary from country to country - could be a good idea reducing our scope to Canada)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
In Brazil, when things gone the way you described, they didn't ditch the Cent, but they reduced the bill's face value by 10.
So, something that used to cost Cr$ 16,45, was "relabeled" as NC$ 1,64 or NC$ 1,65 (the rounding was done as the seller's discretion).
This is a little expensive decision, as the current currency must be rebranded until new bills and coins are made - but if this happens just once or twice a century, can be a better solution.
(for the sake of completeness: in Brazil, they did this a dozen times just in the last half of the last century! Man, that was messy!)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Tax evasion is tax evasion. It should be prevented, if only for principle. The law should be for everyone, or I wrong?
You're right! So... we already have laws for tax evasion.
Non issue.
Pennies are only legal tender in amounts no greater than 25 cents. So a restaurant can refuse to accept 2025 pennies in payment for a $20.25 meal without absolving you of your debt. But if you give them a twenty and 25 pennies they can't hold out for a twenty and a quarter.
Serve Gonk.
If you have a choice as to whether to accept something as payment for a debt, that is by definition no longer legal tender.
AIUI generaly cash transactions in a store do not involve a debt to the store and therefore legal tender is not directly relevant.
Yes, exactly. You must take possession, or consume, a good or service before paying to incur a debt, and only then does the distinction of legal tender come into play.
Say you are buying a sandwich at some place like Subway. You don't take possession of the goods until after you have handed over your money (even though you might be holding it in your hands), so there is never any debt, so they are free to refuse $100 bills (which a lot of shops did before the 100 was updated to the 2001 "Canadian Journey" series).
Now in a restaurant where you sit down and eat before paying, there a debt is incurred, and they cannot refuse legal tender without absolving you of your debt. Note however that the law does not obligate them to make change!
Serve Gonk.