Looks like at least some merchants are saying they can't get enough cents, and they're pushing for Federal legislation to allow rounding to the nearest nickel (because there's currently a patchwork of local laws). https://www.convenience.org/Media/Daily/2025/1/1/2-NACS-Urges-Congress-to-Address-Penny-Shortage_GR
If a retailer didn't have to keep spotless records for tax reasons they could easily just round up OR down. Who's really causing problems with this
The US Mint is charged with providing some of the instruments necessary to conduct commerce. The US Mint provides coins, several denominations. Like any manufacturing plant, there is overhead that is considered when defining a shop rate. This overhead is applied at different rates across all product lines. Some of the cost of making a Penny will still be there after the product line is ended. The cost of making a Penny is very difficult to pinpoint.
I’m not trying to be political but these government people can’t even agree on a budget to fund the government. How can they plan this which is more complicated? And please, don’t make this political.
The number that has not been quoted is total Direct Costs. How much does it cost for the planchets, planchet processing prior to strike, cent dies, cent coin presses and handling for release into the economy. I'm sure that number is above a cent, because a cent can't pay for much these days, but it's lower than the figure of 3.69 cents which is the number in the news reports.
