Help with some % work?

[B006IEMAN]

OK.. SO I know basic math and SOME algebra, but it has never been my subject of expertise... Anyways...

 

I use a card swiper and I get charged 2.75% of the price + tax/tip... so I am wondering how I would figure out, or what % tax I need to add to counter this 2.75% charge I get. I know charging 2.75 will NOT work because if I charge 2.75 that makes a 20 dollar charge would make it like 20.55 but... then I get charged the 2.75% which means I get charged roughly 0.56.. which means I only get 19.99.. which really isn't that bad.. but is there a percentage that will counter this to keep what I get right at 20.. or any dollar amount... so say if I charged 90 dollars for something, a % that would counter the 2.75%? which I know if I did the 2.75 I would end up with 89.93... so for every few dollars I only lose a cent or so, but I don't want to lose anything..

 

Thank you in advance for any help, and sorry if I made this really confusing... if so I can try to explain a bit better...

[Bignose]

My first impression is that if you follow this scheme, there is at least some potential to open yourself to unintended legal consequences. That is, I really don't think it can be legal to charge more for taxes than your local state, district, municipality, etc. charge.

 

I.e. if where I live, I pay a 7% sales tax, it cannot be legal for any vendor to charge me 10% and call all 10% taxes.

 

And while it may be legal to go ahead and give yourself a tip for every transaction, if I saw that on my bill, I think I'd be pretty darn angry about it. And, come to think about it, I bet it actually isn't legal, either.

 

Now, what some companies do is pass that charge on to their customers in the form of an increased price for people who use credit cards. For a long time, it was very common for gas stations to list a 'cash price' and a 'charge price'. It isn't as common today, but you can still see it once in a while. In one of the consumer bills Congress passed in 2011 or 2012, they explicitly made that legal for regular retailers like WalMart, Target, or even Amazon to do, too. While legal, it would be at least a little surprising if any of them did it, simply because it would give their competitors something huge to advertise against.

 

No, I think that you just need to accept the credit card fee as part of the cost of conducting a business that accepts credit cards. One thing to hang your hat on at the end of the year, I am pretty sure that the credit card fees you pay are a legitimate expense, you should be able to write them off for tax purposes.

[ewmon]

Try thinking in "pseudo-algrebraic" English as follows —

 

You want to add a portion (x) to the original price (1), and from this sum (1+x) you want to subtract a percentage (2.75%) of this sum from it, which give you the original price (1). Once you start talking like this, you'll see that this description "translates" into algebra as

 

(1+x) – 2.75%×(1+x) = 1

 

Then you need to "solve for x", as mathematicians love to say, because x is the portion of the original price that you need to add (as I defined above).

 

If you have any troubles "solving for x", get back to us and I'll help you through it.

[B006IEMAN]

My first impression is that if you follow this scheme, there is at least some potential to open yourself to unintended legal consequences. That is, I really don't think it can be legal to charge more for taxes than your local state, district, municipality, etc. charge.

 

I.e. if where I live, I pay a 7% sales tax, it cannot be legal for any vendor to charge me 10% and call all 10% taxes.

 

And while it may be legal to go ahead and give yourself a tip for every transaction, if I saw that on my bill, I think I'd be pretty darn angry about it. And, come to think about it, I bet it actually isn't legal, either.

 

Now, what some companies do is pass that charge on to their customers in the form of an increased price for people who use credit cards. For a long time, it was very common for gas stations to list a 'cash price' and a 'charge price'. It isn't as common today, but you can still see it once in a while. In one of the consumer bills Congress passed in 2011 or 2012, they explicitly made that legal for regular retailers like WalMart, Target, or even Amazon to do, too. While legal, it would be at least a little surprising if any of them did it, simply because it would give their competitors something huge to advertise against.

 

No, I think that you just need to accept the credit card fee as part of the cost of conducting a business that accepts credit cards. One thing to hang your hat on at the end of the year, I am pretty sure that the credit card fees you pay are a legitimate expense, you should be able to write them off for tax purposes.

State tax where I am at is about 9%... I wouldn't be charging any more than state tax lol. I already knew that part.. it is just that the company I use to swipe cards charges me 2.75% for the entire bill, that's price + tax/tip... I don't charge tips... only places here that do that is Restaurants for parties of 6 or more, or for room service in hotels.

 

My main goal is just to see if there is a % of "tax" to add to each bill that will always counter the 2.75% that I get charged, so if I say charge someone 20 or maybe 50 dollars for something, after my 2.75% fee, I still get that full 20 or 50 dollars. But I am thinking, no matter what % I put in, it would always have to change. I figured if I do 2.75% tax on a 20 dollar charge, the total for the customer would be 20.55, and then I get charged 2.75% which would be 56, so I would only get 19.99, which means I lose 0.01 which isn't a huge deal, but over time 1 cent can add up. but of course, lets say I charged someone 90, and I do the 2.75% that means the customers bill comes to 92.47... but I get charged the 2.75% fee for that 92.47.. which is 2.54 ... 92.47 - 2.54 = 89.93... a 6 cent loss... so the higher I go.. the more I lose if I just charge a 2.75% tax, which matched the 2.75% I get charged per transaction of the total bill..

 

So I am assuming there is really no set % I could charge that would counter this? As for the more or the less I charge, The outcome will always be different, unless like the other guy said, I do some math. And as customers don't always want to sit there while I calculate it, maybe I should just charge a set tax... which I was thinking somewhere around 3.25 or 3.5%? Still better than state tax...

 

People can still pay me with cash, but sometimes they don't have cash, but I don't want to lose money. But If I charge like 3.25% on a 20 dollar charge that comes to 20.65... then I get the 2.75% fee charged to me for using the swiper, and 2.75% on a 20.65 transaction is about 56 cents. so... 20.65 - 56 = 20.09.. so I actually get 20.09.. 9 cents more... course now if I do say the 90 dollar charge... 90 dollars with a 3.25% tax that's 2.92 which makes it 92.92.. then with the 2.75% fee I get charged... that = 2.55... so... 92.92 - 2.55 = 90.37... so a 37 cent profit over the original charge.... So it seems if I match the fee I get charged, the higher I charge the more I lose, albeit only cents, but that adds up... then if I charge a higher % than my fee, I gain more the higher I charge, which doesn't seem bad, but i am trying to keep it generally around the same 20 or 90 dollar charge... but it is seeming there is no way around that without changing the tax every time for each different price?

 

Did this clear some things up?

 

So again.. I am not doing anything illegal per se as I am not charging even anything near what state tax is here. which ranges from about 8.4+ up to about 9% maybe a little more.

 

If there is no way around it, I guess maybe I will just have to charge just slightly extra, 1. for the "convenience" of using a CC/Debit... and 2. to counter the fees I get charged per swipe.

 

Try thinking in "pseudo-algrebraic" English as follows —

 

You want to add a portion (x) to the original price (1), and from this sum (1+x) you want to subtract a percentage (2.75%) of this sum from it, which give you the original price (1). Once you start talking like this, you'll see that this description "translates" into algebra as

 

(1+x) – 2.75%×(1+x) = 1

 

Then you need to "solve for x", as mathematicians love to say, because x is the portion of the original price that you need to add (as I defined above).

 

If you have any troubles "solving for x", get back to us and I'll help you through it.

I actually partially understood that .. yay me... I will show that to my fiance.. who was in Calculus in high school... She has been so busy lately I didn't wanna bother her with this stuff, which is why I posted on here. She also just helped me with 18 weeks of algebra in school, so if I ask her to help me anymore, I might get things thrown at me.

 

anyways, thanks for that equation.. I will do some more math .. woot.

[overtone]

 

For a long time, it was very common for gas stations to list a 'cash
price' and a 'charge price'. It isn't as common today, but you can still
see it once in a while. In one of the consumer bills Congress passed in
2011 or 2012, they explicitly made that legal for regular retailers
like WalMart, Target, or even Amazon to do, too. While legal, it would
be at least a little surprising if any of them did it, simply because it
would give their competitors something huge to advertise against.

If they did it as a cash discount, especially on certain items or for certain customers, I can't see the image problem - but it is still legal for the credit card companies to retaliate.

 

And it's worth noticing that over the economy as a whole we have an entire industry newly moved into the middle of our financial transactions, an industry we never needed before, charging us a middleman's fee to buy everything and establishing that fee as an invisible part of the price to all. Our lives are now a percentage or two more expensive, the dollars we spend are only 97 cents each even before interest.

[ewmon]

You should get x = %/(1-%), where % needs to be changed into a number, for example, 2.75% becomes 0.0275.

 

For your case, x = 0.0275/0.9725 = 0.028277635.

 

So, for a $20 price, add 0.028277635×$20 = $0.5655527 or just $0.57. Then, 2.75% of $20.57 = $0.565675 or simply $0.57.

 

If the % was 25%, then x = 0.25/0.75 = 0.33333333. For a $30 price, add 0.33333333×$30 = $9.9999999 or simply $10. Then, 25% of $40 = $10.