Penny Problems

I guess - but there are always externalities in any transaction. If you're paying cash, somebody has to pay to haul that cash around, never mind the cost of minting or printing it in the first place.

It seems to me that moving digital bits around should almost always be cheaper and more efficient than moving physical tokens or stores of value. Of course, the two have different failure modes (being hacked vs. being robbed/burgled, etc). And if the electronic clearinghouses don't have meaningful competition, they can seek rent as they please.

 

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The saga concludes; the self checkout stations have been taught that it's OK to round change to the nickel, and are now doing so.

 

Distribution is uneven to be sure. Around here (ironically quite close to the Denver Mint) they're getting pretty scarce.

 

100% on point.
I live 20-25 miles from West Point. I've never gotten a single 'W' quarter in circulation.

 

I'm ~60 miles from the Denver mint and it's always around May before I see any current year coins in change. This year I think I've only seen one 2025 quarter and none of the other denominations. When I roll up my piggy banks I'll check again, but this year has been weird.

 

I'd be surprised if this was true in regards to calculating/rounding sales tax amounts.

 

Yeah, and I wonder what actual laws there are around fractional-cent rounding.

I'm sure merchants are on the hook for remitting accurate aggregate taxes collected, but I doubt that the state wants a transaction-by-transaction report. Might need to present those for an audit, though.