Matt GrayI Just did something very European.
Thought I found a great deal in a shop here in Vancouver, only to find out at the till that they don’t include sales tax in their shelf prices.
I thought that was just a USA thing!
Aaron Davis@mattgrayyes I thought so too! 😮
Victor Frunza 🇨🇦@mattgrayyes we have a habit of adopting silly American things from time to time, like making you do math at the checkout.
skribe 🇺🇦 
@vfrunza @mattgrayyes like driving on the wrong side of the road 🤣
Jonathan Downie
Daniel M. Reck@mattgrayyes Canada used to have a tax rebate program for guests but I just learned after returning from Canada a few weeks ago the program was discontinued in 2007.
Glad to have supported our Canadian neighbors to the north; they deserve stable government services.
Please don't come here until at least late January 2029... We don't deserve your tax dollars and they'd probably be embezzled before providing any good public service.
Litchralee@mattgrayyes I wonder if that's a thing they do in order to show prices comparable to American shops just across the border. Cross-border sales are (were?) a sizable chunk of business.
Here in California, retailers can choose to include tax or not, but must be consistent and must post notice of whether they're inclusive or exclusive of tax. So it's not the law that's perpetuating this silliness of pre-tax price stickers.
Jon, FYI 
@litchralee @mattgrayyes It's for the same reason as in the US: no law requires it. So few businesses do it. I've pretty much only seen food trucks and liquor stores list the full price.
Heliomass has moved@mattgrayyes I got fooled the first time I ever visited a Tim Horton’s. Tried to pay the pre-tax amount with exact change, and… well… it got awkward.
PAIGE! 🍁@heliomass @mattgrayyes I did the same thing at the Vancouver airport Tim Hortons when I was fresh off the plane
Gordon Fawks@mattgrayyes Sadly it is not and is consistently one of the most frustrating things about living here.
Daniel Brotherston@GordonFawks @mattgrayyes I’d say if that’s the most frustrating thing you’re doing good. There’s much much worse things like starting with how the whole country is dominated by cars and most places are completely dependent on cars.
@danbrotherston @mattgrayyes It's the one that has annoyed me as long as I had an allowance to spend. The planning situation has only annoyed me for 20 years.
@GordonFawks @mattgrayyes shrugs...fair enough.
For me, the prices thing only annoys me when I am at the cash in a store (or a restaurant)...the planning situation bugs me every moment I am outside of a house.
It's one of the reasons I moved to the Netherlands. The pricing was just a side benefit.
@danbrotherston @mattgrayyes VAT always made more sense anyways. My deep suspicion is both are linked my corporations hate of government and regulation. Not using a "prices all in" system allows them to subconsciously shift costing onto the government. Public transit, of course, reduces the number of cars they can sell.
Paul Hart@mattgrayyes yeah, as a dual national who spent their youth in the UK I still find it super frustrating. Mostly the issue is that there are both Federal and Provincial powers to set sales taxes, so different jurisdictions have different rates. As a result the default position is “don’t put any tax amounts on the products, anywhere, and figure it out at the checkout.” I guess that’s useful if a product changes exemption status, or the tax rate changes, but those things don’t happen very often.
I hope you enjoy your visit!