Dollar Coin Alliance Endorses Bipartisan USA Act That Saves Taxpayers At Least $57 Billion

There were three concurrent and related threads.

I asked that we redirect attention and discussion to this thread.

For reference and other discussion, here are the other threads...

https://goccf.com/t/236502
https://goccf.com/t/236967

From one of the other threads which have since been locked to consolidate discussion in this one.



Could pass, but introducing a bill that doesn't have enogh co-sponsers to insure passage right before a 5 week recess is a pretty good way to give it the kiss of death. More likely it won't be seen again this session.



A "phase out" which means it will never happen because the "phase out" will get exteneded, and then extended again etc until it is finally ignored because, with the bills still in circulation, the coin fails yet again and IT gets discontinued. (They mandated metric weights and volumes on food and other items with a "phase out" of the english units back in the early 1970's. Forty five years and the english units are still there.)



They have already been "working " on that for four years, and they are still "working" on it (so fare they have made two reports, one said we need more time, the other said it can't be done). So this will give them five more years to come up with the answer we were able to give them on day one, it can't be done.



Nope, it will STAY at 2% and there will be rounding If they get rid of the cent and keep the five cent things will be rounded to the nearest nickel You buy that $1 head of lettuce the tax is 2 cents, rounded to the nearest nickel and you pay $1 no tax. Buy two heads, $2 plus 4 cents tax, rounds to $2.05. If they get rid of the cent and the nickel and round to the nearest dime you can buy three heads before you have to pay any tax, $3.10 cost you and extra 4 cents. But buying 4, 5, 6, or 7 heads would not result in having to pay any additional tax, $4.10, $5.10, $6.10, and $7.10 respectively. Just because we don't have cents or nickels doesn't mean the tax RATES have to jump by dimes. It you check a lot of places have tax rates on sales or property taxes or other rates measured in " X and a quarter" cent rates and we have NEVER had quarter cents and no Half Cents for over a hundred years. rounding handles the problem nicely and will continue even once the cent and nickel are gone.



Crane makes paper not notes. There are no additional security features in the paper used for twos so the BEP can use the same paper they are making for ones to make twos, no "time to shift" is needed.



Sales tax will be rounded up or down as needed just as it is now, what you meant was that sales tax RATES, will not be rounded up or down.

Listen guys (and gals). It may be discussing a TOKEN in the US Modern section, but please bear with me.

What I have to say does have some relevance, as I published an 891 page (over 1 million word) book on the subject of sales tax and it's tokens and it's history for all 50 states (including those that do not have a state sales tax). "Sales Tax Tokens and Scrip: Histories".

I assure you that there has not been a single word written in this forum that was not discussed in greatest detail in 1932 and forward after the Great Depression. The exact same ballyhoo from both sides claiming that a fraction (one-tenth of a cent, back then) would break the poor people, with the other side saying they could just round it all out and be fine.

What resulted was the sales tax, beginning in Illinois, followed quickly by a dozen other states. In fact, there were a couple of states that were on the verge of bankruptcy and the sales tax was the ONLY thing that saved them from that horror.

The "PEOPLE PLEASING" side of each state voted for the sales tax token, which was quickly enacted in 13 states. The sales tax token was specifically made so that you could pay to within 1/10th of a cent to the exact sales tax amount.

Within a few years most consumers were throwing them on the ground. I have a few pictures, one from Ohio, which shows a huge number of the sales tax "stamps" littering the front of a Ben Franklin's.

A good friend of mine who actually lived through that time in Washington still remembers collecting them off the street until they had 10 of them to trade in for a penny candy.

They became NOTHING but a nuisance. The same way cents, and nickels, are today.

And please, for the love of Goodness, don't start quoting me weird little pieces and parts of history to try to give your "he said I said" nonsense any bearing.

Yes, I know it's called a Use Tax, and what that means.
Yes, I know "only" thirteen states had a state issued sales tax token. But DO YOU know how many states had the MERCHANTS make up their own sales tax "tokens"?
Yes, I know Black Friday was in 1929, not 1932.

etc. etc. etc.

I'm not replying to any of the picky little bits and pieces anyone might wish to toss up because there is simply too much nonsense, the same as their has ALWAYS been in regards to this subject.

If you honestly believe that losing the cent or the nickel with cost the average consumer any money, then let me be frank - you are stupid.

A good comparison and totally relevant to the discussion.


I wish I had your restraint.


I would not have been as blunt, but I am going to allow it.

Some people just do not understand the concept of rounding. Here are a couple facts to remember:

1) Rounding is done in the sum total of a CASH purchase, not on individual items and has nothing to do with taxes. In fact there are many instances where sales taxes added to the purchase will change the end amount from a "Round Up" to a "Round Down" transaction. It is all mathematics.

2) Rounding is done on CASH purchases only and not on checks, credit/debit/value cards or electronic sales.

3) When done properly, rounding is either up or down. If, let's say, they just eliminate the cent, then cash purchases get rounded off to the nearest 5 cents. If the total purchase price after taxes etc. ends in .x1, .x2, .x6 or .x7 the price is rounded down. If the price ends in .x3, .x4, .x8 or .x9 it is rounded up. If it ends in .x5 or .x0 it remains the same. If a merchant wants to cheat consumers out of a couple cents per purchase they will get found out and suffer at least bad publicity and possible criminal and civil charges.

4) Most stores use electronic cash registers that would be programmed to round off to the proper amounts, this takes the guesswork out of the equation.

5) When rounding was introduced in other countries that eliminated the cent or it's equivalent (including Canada) no increase in prices occurred. In fact many merchants round down on all sales as a sales tactic or for customer goodwill.

6) Eliminating small bills in favor of coins also does not increase prices and does not induce rounding.

7) It has been said many times: There is no way to make the cent so that it costs less than a cent to produce, even if the metal was free.

Which basically means since dollar coins hit the coin jar, they will be used less and require more of them to be minted?




No you don't get it. assume there is no longer a nickel or penny and the dime is the smallest currency.

Now assume there is a 2% tax.

you have and item to purchase at$1 price....

$1.00*1.02= $1.10 paid?

how do you pay 2 cents tax if 2 cents don't exist? The smallest you can pay is a dime. So either you pay 8cents extra that magically gets added to the math as above, or the 2% tax is thrown away so you don't have to pay tax on the $1 item anymore?

You keep going on often, jbuck, about what Canada did and such, but the thing that was mentioned in the prior thread was that the nickel as well the cent could be going leaving the dime to be the lowest denomination.

so tell me, and show your math, in the absence of a nickel and cent where the dime is the lowest denomination, what does one pay for a $1 priced item with a 2% tax, in cash?




1 itself I dont know, I dont know anyone in that kind of place, but I know of places where 2 yen can buy you something because the communities that arent a metropolis like Kyoto and such seem to be more like co-ops to me that a town. I am not fuly sure how to explain this the way it was explained to me was jsut easy thought of as economis within the whole are different. Like fuel may cost the same but not food as I tried to show with the cigarettes price example from DC, New Orleans, etc in the US. certain areas things cost more than others and in Japan, there are some places where the Yen or 2 can still buy things for daily life. Japan like the US have their impoverished areas. Not everywhere has a Starbuchs with a $30 expresso people buy each morning.

Thanks for addressing the tax bit, but I don't think the 2% would be waived and rounded down because only a dime exists. the IRS is getting their money "come heck or high water" as was said to me back when I went to an IRS office to get sales and use tax forms.

No mention of the quarter in the absence of the nickel yet, but I am still reading and adding on to this post as I catch up.

That's a lie. When was the last time you saw a check with 357/1000 on it?

ALL transactions are rounded to the nearest available denomination of currency.

This goes to everyone claiming you wont get rounded when paying with a credit card and still get to track "1 cent"s the last time this came around, well that would be illegal to allow those people to use a denomination of currency that is not available in cash just because a computer can use any number of decimal places it wants. without the nickel or cent, EVERYONE would have to round to the dime, check AND credit/debit cards too.

Just because you can write a check or use a credit card for $500, doesn't mean you possess a $500 bill.




Where does this even come from? are you reading any of the arguements or jsut trying to argue with yourself? The price increase was never mentioned because of a bill changing to a coin, but because the 100ths place being removed.

Look for those that are having so much trouble with math I will try to make it simple enough for a grade schooler to understand.

$9.87

Let's break this down. 9 is the ONES places in math, this represents the dollar because the dollar sign noting the format the number was written in.

8 represents the 1/10ths place. this is how many dimes that are 1/10th of a dollar it would be.

7 represents the 1/100ths place. how many pennies it would take in money.

[/end grade school lesson on money]
Now if the penny was removed you wouldn't really have a need for the 7 so on the price you would just round to the smallest coin right? being the nickel that would be either 5 or you would change the previous 8 to a 9. Rounding 7 by 5's becomes 5 or 10.

Now if also there is no nickel, or 5 placeholder, you would have to round that 7 to 0 or 10.

the price would become then $9.90 or $9.80. Why would someone price somethingin the 1/100ths palce if there is no 1100th amount of money? When the half-cent was removed we stopped having a 1/1000ths place because things couldn't cost $0.005 anymore. We dropped the 3rd decimal place and rounded to 2 decimal places. be it the price of an item (not counting fuel and its weird tax that is added at the pump), and for taxes. Yes there are some with that 6.875% tax, but you have to round when you pay it, you dont actually have a $0.005 to pay with so it always rounds up anyway when it appears.

0,1,2,3,4 all round down to 0, but 5,6,7,8,9 round up to 10 and since $0.005 is in the latter not the former it rounds up to $0.01, the lowest available current amount that exists for being able to pay.

So IF only the dime 1/10th of a dollar exists, all prices will be adjusted to that. the starting thing would be $9.9 or $9.8 to get rid of the 2nd decimal place to round to only 1 since that is the only decimal place that exists a form to pay with. Odds are most places will round up the price to begin with. This IS inflation, because of a change in currency.

Not the dollar being changed from a bill to a coin, but the non-existence of the 2nd decimal place is what most people mean when they say prices will go up. Likewise to have a sale or make something cheaper than an opponent, ALL prices will go up a little bit more so that the "sale" items can be lowered to make them look special.

So this item may become a loss-leader at $9.8 and give up its 7 cents, but other items will go up1 if not 2 in the 1/10ths to make that money back, and their price will remain that higher price now. One day the $9.8 loss-leader may go off sale and reach its standard price in the new system at $9.9 or more so when it is put on "sale" again it can be lowered in price. With the dime being the only decimal place left, that will be the one that changes in order to raise a price or lower it.

as this inflation increases the dime will soon be the new penny and will have the same buying power in a few years as the penny does now. Sure it may cost less to make they, but it doesn't change that prices will change because of it.

I think it is people jsut not understanding math and how numbers are written when people speak to know that the "." means. Money is only really a number representing a face thing. You have to use the printed and minted money to pay the government otherwise it wouldnt be needed it could all be done with math except the trust isn't there to be able to do the math, nor the competency since a majority of the US populace has problems with math.

So when someone says the coins part is going to raise the prices, its cause the lowest available decimal place will change and therefore everything will have to adjust to that decimal place, be it prices or taxes in some way. Not jsut because paper is being switch with metal representation.




Ever heard of a loss-leader? I jsut mentioned so I hope you do understand the concept... you take a loss in profit for item A so that you can get more use from Items B~Z.

The penny is a loss leader.

Instead of looking at just the penny, since the mint doesn't make JUST the penny, look at ALL the coins it makes. Does it make a profit?

IF all coins, $1, half, quarter, dime, nickel, penny are making a net profit, then ITS NOT A LOSS! Its just not that much of a gain.

But what will the COST to the people that use cash be in correlation to the amount "saved" by not having the penny? the two dont come out equal.

If all 380 million people in the US spend an extra 5 cents per item purchased due to price rounding, that is 19 million dollar just if people buy only a single item per day. lets say its 1 cent extra lost to rounding. 3.8 million per day, just buying a single item.

now lets take that 1 cent per item lost per day for a whole year and assume people only buy ONE thing per day.

that 1.3832 BILLION extra spent per year but the people to accommodate the governments loss of what 40? 60... MILLION dollars to make the penny?

tell me the cost of making the penny is equal to the loss the general buying public would incur? I gave the lowest possible increase in price not rounding to the nearest dime. I gave every man woman and child in the country only 1 item per day, knowing some would buy none as a newborn can't or shouldnt be handling money but someone has to spend for them, and most would buy more than 1 thing a day.

And with the way things are prices above 5 cents currently, there would be little rounding down, so dont give me the rounding would even out both ways, sorry, I'm too good at math and statistics for that nonsense to fly.

so PLEASE tell me how the money saved by not making just the penny (not counting the nickel) will be worth it to the cost of the people, and show your math!

$1.00 × $1.02 = $1.00 (round down).
$2.00 × $2.04 = $2.00 (round down).
$3.00 × $3.06 = $3.10 (round up).
$4.00 × $4.08 = $4.10 (round up).
$5.00 × $5.10 = $5.10 (stays the same).






The first statement is true (here in Canada). The penny has been eliminated from circulation, so one cannot use them (yes they can still be used, but they most likely would not be accepted). However, the cent has not been eliminated electronicly/ cheque-illy (if that word makes sense). If something costs $8.08 (with cash) it is rounded to $8.10. Buy the same item with something like a debit card and it cost $8.08.

As for the 375/1000, the Half Cent has long since been eliminated. I suspect that in the future (when the cent has been long since been eliminated) one could not use them. If one had $321.07 on their debit card the government wouldn't just take away those Two Cent. They still exist on the card, so people can spend them. A reason why the cent would not be taken away electronically, though, is that one could not own money electronically when Half Cents were around. Denominations were much easier to get rid of back then.




Rounding would not even out you say? Well, here is fake cheque for an example (without taxes; I do not feel like calculating those):

$10.99
$ 2.08
$ 8.59
$13.56
--------
$35.22
Rounds to $35.20.

If each individual item were rounded, it would look like this: $11 + $2.1 + $8.6 + $13.6. All that equals $35.30. As you could see from my fake cheque, every items' one cent spot ends with a number that can be rounded up (like most items), but adding up a bunch of numbers that can round up can result in a number that rounds down. Sure, one saves tenn cents, but the person is saving something




I am not 100% sure I understand what you are talking about, but the assumption should be that everyone that can buy things buys more than one item (I cannot speak for everyone, but I for one have never went into a store and only bought one item). Like my fake cheque above, the majority of the items would round up, but if a person buys enough of those rounding up items (which could possibly only be two item), the total would round down.

Hopefully all that makes sense to someone other than me, but that is my opinion on this