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posted by martyb on Monday August 10 2020, @04:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-if-it-were-in-the-Eastern-part-of-the-state dept.

Man wins $7 million in lottery after buying every single ticket:

Kevin Clark, from Candler in North Carolina, had a hunch that the top $US5 million ($A7 million) prize in the Mega Cash scratch-off game would be won in the western part of the state.

So he came up with an unusual strategy to ensure he got his hands on the lucky ticket – by travelling from store to store and buying every ticket he could find.

Mr Clark spent four hours on his quest to purchase every $20 Mega Cash scratchie ticket he came across in around 40 different stores.

And while it is not known how much he spent in total, it’s safe to say he came out on top after a ticket he bought from a Stop N Go outlet in Swannanoa, North Carolina ended up being the winner.

[...] In the end he decided to pocket a $US3 million ($A4.2 million) lump sum instead of taking the $US5 million as an annuity of $US250,000 ($A350,267) per year for two decades.

After taxes, he was left with a total cash prize of around $US2.1 million ($A2.94 million).

“I had a real good feeling it was going to be in the western part of the state,” Mr Clark said, according to the NC Education Lottery.

However, he said he was still stunned when his tactic paid off.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @02:14PM (16 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @02:14PM (#1034315)

    Does AU lie to their retail customers about VAT as well (concealing it from the receipt), or is that only Europe?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @03:48PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @03:48PM (#1034363)

    The fuck you on about?
    The taxes are clearly listed in the receipt every place i've been in Europe, including the part where i live.
    This example receipt i'm looking at right now lists the items with tax price, total and also tax percent, total without tax, amount of tax and total with tax. What more do you want?

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @05:31PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @05:31PM (#1034409)

      Last time I did much shopping in Europe was in the 1990s, at that time it was not customary for VAT to be listed on store receipts, maybe times have changed.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @06:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @06:37PM (#1034445)

      "What more do you want?"

      maybe for people to not be such suck ass slaves to be paying vat in the first place like the dipshits in the US who pay the income tax?

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday August 10 2020, @04:13PM (6 children)

    by looorg (578) on Monday August 10 2020, @04:13PM (#1034372)

    While I can't speak for all of Europe, since I doubt it's shown exactly the same way in each and every country, that is not a thing I have noted and I have been to most of the countries on the continent and there have been shopping. These days more or less all of them, that I can recall, show the tax rate, the amount of the purchase that was made up of said tax followed by the net and the gross amounts. So what is this tax concealment you talk about?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @05:34PM (5 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @05:34PM (#1034411)

      I guess it's changed since the 1990s - at that time VAT was rather softly spoken most places. Sure, everybody knew it was 22% or whatever, but the store receipts just showed what you paid.

      I suppose the 'Murican difference is that we don't put the post-VAT (here called Sales Tax) price on the shelf or the itemization, just tack it on at the end as an "in 'yer face, taxman did this to ya" math challenge that most 'Murican's can't do without a calculator.

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      • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday August 10 2020, @06:12PM (4 children)

        by looorg (578) on Monday August 10 2020, @06:12PM (#1034432)

        It probably has, I don't exactly recall how receipts looked 30 years ago.

        The thing tho were it might be weird is if you are in a business establishment of some kind of buy different items that have different tax-rates; one such example might be a restaurant where the food is 12% while if you decide to booze it up that is sold at 25%. Same with if you buy a newspaper (6%), a candy bar (12%) and a pack of smokes (25%) in a store. I don't recall exactly how those receipts look at the moment but I think it just lists multiple lines at the bottom one for each tax rate. Beyond that I think it's mostly that if you bought many different items it doesn't tell you the tax per item or if it's multiple tax-rates at the bottom it doesn't say which products was which rate since the receipt just tells you the total tax on the total sum (per tax rate) so if you want to know it for a specific item you have to first figure out and know which tax-rate it is and then do some manual calculations.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @07:49PM (3 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @07:49PM (#1034478)

          Grocery here is pretty crazy that way - many items aren't taxed, but: surprise! a lot of them are, and there's precious little mention of that on the shelf tags - if there even is a shelf tag... stores have gotten kind of lax about having any kind of pricing on the shelves I find about 1% of what I pick up to buy has to be taken to a scanner to know what it costs - I take a perverse bit of satisfaction in telling the clerk: "please scan this, there's no price anywhere in the store" and then telling them to send it back when it's some ridiculous high number (last one was $15 for a 10 lb bag of rocks... they were nice rocks, maybe $7/10 lbs nice rocks, but sure as hell not $15/10 lbs nice.)

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          • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday August 10 2020, @08:14PM (2 children)

            by looorg (578) on Monday August 10 2020, @08:14PM (#1034493)

            They do something similar here in that they have recently (last half-decade or so) started to change the weight/volume of items (usually foodstuffs). They used to be fairly standardized as in 1kg, 500g, 250g etc but now they can more or less have them at any weight they want it seems and then they sell them per item instead of the previous weight/volume and once you have a little think about it and note the price per 1kg it usually turns out it wasn't/isn't a very great deal. So shelf-tags here have to say the price for the item (inc any taxes) and the price per unit (1kg/liter).

            So one of the things that blow my mind here is how people keep buying pre-cut sallads for about $1.5-2 per 100g. Thinking they are getting some kind of deal. They could walk into a restaurant and eat cheaper or if they just cut their own it would be enormous amounts for the same price.

            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @09:05PM (1 child)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @09:05PM (#1034528)

              The orange juice here finally set me off, we no longer shop at the big chain that used to sell fresh juice at $2.99 per 64oz, then they started running "sales" so that only one (rotating different every week) brand was $2.99 per 64 while "regular" price went up to $3.69 per 64. Then the 64oz containers shrunk to 58oz, but the prices remained the same. Then a year later the 58oz containers shrunk to 52oz but the prices remained the same - and I had enough. We shop at a smaller store now that still sold 64oz OJ for $2.99, later inflated to 64oz for $3.29 - which is fine, prices increase, I get that, but don't play me like I'm an idiot.

              The big chain also about 5 years ago started "BOGO" where you have to buy two of an item to get the "good sale" price, but... little surprise here... the BOGO price is actually the normal price, and the other 19 weeks out of 20 when the item isn't on "super special BOGO price" it's just twice as expensive as it was 6 months before it went into their BOGO pool. They can literally get stuffed, I don't need them and really have enjoyed getting away from the heavy mind-games marketing which was operating on so many levels beyond the ones mentioned here.

              I grocery shop to buy food, not to play pricing games.

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              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @04:44PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @04:44PM (#1035001)

                You can't really stop them doing what they want, if they hired a new whizz kid marketing guy to do exactly that. You vote with your wallet.

                When on the receiving end (i.e. at work), I pace myself to give about what they paid for. If the guys making 2x my salary aren't doing 2x as good a job or (more usually) dumping work on juniors, then I need to slow it down again.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 10 2020, @07:08PM (5 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday August 10 2020, @07:08PM (#1034459) Journal

    Lie? While in the past it was unusual that it was explicitly listed on the receipt, there was never a claim “there is no VAT paid”, which would need to have been written there for it being lying. The receipt tells you what you paid for, and how much. That's what matters. Do you also need the receipt to tell you how much of the price you pay goes to the supplier of the goods, how much is used for the shop staff, how much goes to the shop's gross profit, and how much tax is deduced of that gross profit? If you pay by card, does your receipt also tell you how much was the transaction fee of the card? Actually the last one would be interesting, because it would tell you how much card purchases increase the price of the goods for everyone, including those who pay in cash.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @07:53PM (4 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @07:53PM (#1034480)

      Do you also need the receipt to tell you how much of the price you pay goes to the supplier of the goods, how much is used for the shop staff, how much goes to the shop's gross profit, and how much tax is deduced of that gross profit? If you pay by card, does your receipt also tell you how much was the transaction fee of the card?

      Actually, I would find this all very interesting, and were I made king one of my many royal decrees would be to decrease taxes on merchants who provide an accurate accounting of all of the above, plus any other potentially revealing information for every transaction (while increasing taxes on those who do not, or who do it inaccurately... gotta stay revenue neutral ;-)

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      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 10 2020, @08:48PM (3 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday August 10 2020, @08:48PM (#1034516) Journal

        “I consider this information interesting” is a very different statement from “not providing that information is lying”.

        BTW, with VAT you can just calculate the amount yourself, so you're not even withheld that information; declaring it explicitly just saves you from having to use your brain (or a calculator).

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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 10 2020, @10:53PM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 10 2020, @10:53PM (#1034591)

          Lying is a bit of a stretch, puffery as they say in real-estate is closer - psychologically slipping it under the rug, as compared to providing a civics lesson on taxes at every single transaction would be more accurate.

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          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 11 2020, @07:16AM (1 child)

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday August 11 2020, @07:16AM (#1034792) Journal

            I don't see how it is puffery either. First, the shop's job isn't to educate me about taxes, it is to sell me stuff. Second, it is far from a secret that there's VAT, unless you are living under a rock, you know it anyway. And third, in the end it doesn't matter whether the tax is directly taken from the price of the good, or later from the shop's profits; in both cases I will end up paying it with the price of the goods. And fourth, I have no idea what lessen it should teach me anyway.

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            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 11 2020, @12:52PM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday August 11 2020, @12:52PM (#1034877)

              unless you are living under a rock, you know it anyway

              That is a far more common way of existence than you might believe - I knew a lot of this type [reddit.com] of people when I was in high school - I thought that most of them grew out of it, but it's more likely that I just don't travel in their circles anymore.

              As for the presentation, or concealment, of VAT/sales tax on receipts, I don't think it's so much a choice of the shoppes as it is mandated by statute, at least in many places. Around here lesson is one being amplified by "I will reduce your taxes" politicians who make that their primary campaigning point - slaying (or tilting, Don Quixote style at) a big evil tax dragon is much more effective when people see the dragon on a daily basis, directly feel the heat of its breath, rather than the very same dragon which stays concealed in a mountain in the distance - taking the same treasure and hoarding it quietly. On the other end of the spectrum, politicians who want to creep the VAT ever higher do prefer that it remain out of sight, out of mind - which my calling "lying" is a bit much - what I referred to as puffery to arrive at the term lying.

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