[1_Rain_Drop]

so what happens if something costs $1.99?
Does one pay $2.00 or $1.90?

[angelcindy]

merchants are preparing to round all transactions to the nearest ten-cent increment,

[GeronL]

do you really think its going to be $1.90?

[AnAmericanAbroad]

Rounding. Over here, the local currency is the Czech Koruna. However, there is also the halar, which was phased out of use around 2002 or 2003 as I recall. Go to the store, though, and you'll see stuff priced at, let's say, 15,06 for a loaf of bread (less than a buck for a one-pound loaf). In this case, that ,06 is halar....so they total you up at the register, and ,50 halar is the rounding point. Less than ,50 halar, and it's rounded down; more than ,50 halar and it's rounded up. One nice thing here, as I must say in pretty much all of Europe, sales tax is reflected in the price, so if a computer is 13,950 Kč, or about 650-odd bucks, that's what you pay at the register. Wish they did back in the States.

[kearnyirish2]

If the Euro conversion was any guide all prices were rounded up...

This is a bad sign.

[ridesthemiles]

Sounds like everything will be rounded off up to the nearest dime. More sales taxes from this, also.

[Brookhaven]

What happens if you buy something for 79 cents, and there is a 6% sales tax?

79 * .06 = 4.74

How do you pay 4.74 cents? They round it up to 5 cents.

Just like there used to be a half penny coin, so people would sell things for 1.5 cents. Then the govt stopped making the coin, and people quit purchasing in half cent amounts.

People will simply quit selling anything for an amount less than a dime. Need something that only costs 2 cents? You’ll need to buy a 5 pack.

[mikrofon]

At 1,000% hyper-inflation, it’ll cost $19.90

[snippy_about_it]

The article says retailers will round up items to the nearest tenth. Ok, but what if my 1 dollar item is taxed at 7 percent?

[umgud]

so what happens if something costs $1.99? Does one pay $2.00 or $1.90?

Depends on whether it's a tax or a product.

[Donkey Odious]

Anything in an “odd” amount will have to be paid with a debit or credit card.....

Up next: rounding to the closest fifty cents.

[bgill]

Does one pay $2.00 or $1.90?

Duuuh, $2 of course.

[Donkey Odious]

Anything in an “odd” amount will have to be paid with a debit or credit card.....

Up next: rounding to the closest fifty cents.

[Grams A]

so what happens if something costs $1.99?
Does one pay $2.00 or $1.90?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count. Our local sales tax is 8.25%. There will be a whole lot of rounding up going on. You’d be surprised how much this will add to the state coffers everywhere over a given period of time.

[Star Traveler]

There can be a couple or so ways to do it. First, you can simply use a debit or credit card.

Or, the store may issue an in-house card for just “cents on the dollar” - and you get it for either $1 or $2 (loaded on the card) and then you just subtract it off the card as you make purchases. Eventually you reload it again.

Or the store can simply issue you a receipt with a scan code on it (stores already do this to “recall” purchases in their system on your receipts). The receipt issued to you is simply the odd-cents-change from some purchase you overpaid by a few pennies. The “overpayment” is contained on the receipt and you bring it the next time and submit it to the machine (or cashier) to use it.

Any one of those ways would be easy enough to do and use so that stores would not have to be concerned about the odd cents on totals for purchases.

[Cronos]

pay by card only....