OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today issued a statement in response to Senate Bill 478 (SB 478), a bill that he sponsored, being signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. Coauthored by Senator Bill Dodd (D-Napa) and Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), the legislation will prohibit h...
All the vacation rental places are appalling. Cleaning few. Pool few. Resort fee. Service fee. Processing fee.
Restaurants are starting on the cash grab a few years back, mostly the ones owned by private equity firms. Mandatory service fee couched as a gratuity, which it most often isn't, so the guest and the servers get fucked.
This law does not ban hidden fees. There are plenty of hidden fees that this law does nothing about.
This law makes it illegal to advertise a price that doesn't account for included fees. If a concert ticket is $40 with a $20 "service" fee, this law would require the tickets to be listed as $60 tickets. This law does not require taxes to be included in advertised prices, sales tax is added after the advertised price.
This law only prohibits misleading advertising of pricing, it however does not require disclosure of pricing.
The biggest source of hidden fees is the medical billing. Healthcare costs are nearly all hidden fees because healthcare providers rarely disclose prices in advance. This bill does nothing about that, because if a price is not advertised, this bill does not effect it, and this bill does not require disclosure of pricing in advance.
This bill is an improvement. This bill will reduce misrepresentation of pricing, but it does not actually ban hidden fees outright.
What about pricing like at my local Kroger store where in the list 99 cents with digital coupon and a QR code and then teeny teeny tiny text that says $3.99 regular price.
I hope this will make it clear how much people actually pay on their retirement accounts. Far too many people I talk to don’t realize that they are paying an “expense ratio” on their investment funds.
I'm guessing it might be because tax rates vary so wildly in the US. Every state has their own percentage of state taxes, and then many counties and cities have their own specific tax rate on top of that.
A company might sell a product nationwide, and it's easier for them to do national advertising that their product is $100 + local taxes than it is for them to make hundreds upon hundreds of different local ads with a precise dollar amount.