[simpleguitar]

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others".

If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law.

The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

[hypeatei]

> there are laws that say

Hmm, maybe this is why it should be handled by Congress and not at the whim of the executive. They can handle all this in one piece of legislation.

[close04]

If the law is slow to change or there are no available pennies, the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices. I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny but it's a quick and easy way to avoid any doubt.

[soerxpso]

Good luck getting Congress to do anything at all, ever. Best we can offer you is one big partisan pork bill every two years, no matter who's in charge and no matter what voters actually want. Maybe if one senator (foolishly) decided to make penny rounding his pet issue, and worked his ass off at it, he could get half of it wrapped into the bi-annual pork bill.

[dyslexit]

The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

[Telemakhos]

So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will always end in 0 or 5. As an added bonus, customers don't have to wonder how much tax they'll pay, because that's already included in the price.

[benregenspan]

> they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

I think most of the ones from previous years are all in people's junk drawers, couches, etc., and only go back into circulation when someone decides to dump them into a Coinstar machine. Retailers are already reporting shortages.

[patrickthebold]

Is gas sold as a whole penny amounts in those locations? Where I am it's always something and 9/10ths of a cent.

[gus_massa]

Here in Argentina the law says they must be rounded down. Initially it was for 5 AR$cents, and some shops still has the oficial sign that says AR$ 0.05.

We unofficially drop the coins/bills when the reach ~US$0.03, so now we dropped the AR$50 bills and everythig in cash is rounded down to AR$100 (US$0.07).

(The only exception is the photocopy shop 2 blocks away from home.)

Credit cards are charged the exact ammount, with cents that are irrelevant.

[unethical_ban]

If the national government literally stops creating a certain precision of money, i expect the "exact change" requirement should be invalid.

[philistine]

I don't want to be glib, but hey what the hey. This is how you can see that the United States is in decline; it can no longer discontinue a coin through legislation.

[dmix]

Congress seems like the most dysfunctional branch of government going on a couple decades now.

They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

[kmeisthax]

The last time America discontinued a coin legislatively was the half cent about 150 years ago. That's a pretty long decline.

[wat10000]

So, round down debit cards too? This seems like a really easy problem to solve.

[meandthewallaby]

They're all easily solvable problems. The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions. This was done via a social media post, not a well thought out transition like Canada had.

[emodendroket]

SNAP is a major source of revenue for grocers so it seems like you wouldn't have to prod them very hard to do that.

[SkyPuncher]

Charges take into account severity of the crime and intent. Nobody is going to get criminal charges for rounding pennies on cash transactions.

[DrewADesign]

Ok— Walmart decides to do something the government doesn’t like re:tariffs or whatnot. They can either plead fealty and retract their decision or the C-Suite can defend themselves against conspiracy to commit a zillion misdemeanors an hour…

[potato3732842]

Sure, on paper. In reality bored fedcops trying to justify their budgets is how you get plenty of unjustifiable suffering.

The secret service probably won't cause a Waco out of it, but I'm sure they'll do something dumb.

[koliber]

Always round up (or down) to the nearest nickel regardless of whether someone pays card, cash, or SNAP. In effect, this would set the gross price as a multiple of 5 cents.

[nickserv]

I fail to see the problem here. Just round the price for every type of transaction.

[chipsrafferty]

Ok so just round it down then

[internetter]

Can you not argue that the average is the same and thus the law isn’t violated?

[dragonwriter]

No, because the law applies to individual transactions, not averages.

[immibis]

Does the law say the average price must be the same, or does it say the price must be the same?

Reality: the supermarket does it the common sense way, and never gets sued, but if they do get sued, the outcome is "you must now refund 2 cents from every SNAP transaction you ever did"

[conductr]

Tons of laws go unenforced

[Ferret7446]

Generally in accounting, insignificant amounts are... insignificant (like how tax calculations are rounded to the dollar).

Please don't strawman this, there is ample evidence for rounding pennies on everyday transactions.

[rtkwe]

More annoying especially during the SNAP gap due to the shutdown the law forbids differential pricing in general so shops couldn't offer lower prices for EBT/SNAP customers as a way to help their neighbors.

[BobbyTables2]

Get rid of SNAP.

Problem solved.

(/s)