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Message:: [QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 3606640, member: 27832"]And if you buy an item priced at 99 cents? In Michigan, at 6% sales tax, it's $1.0494. Are hundredths of a cent needed for commerce? But ignore "non-round" tax rates. Go to a state that doesn't charge sales tax on food, and buy a bunch of bananas at 49 cents a pound. The bunch weighs 2.38 pounds (rounded, because scales round their readings). You owe $1.1622. What do you do, if the government has decided not to mint hundredth-cents any more? My point: we already round totals ALL THE TIME. Everyone is perfectly fine with rounding to the nearest cent; we've been doing it for over 150 years. In that time, the dollar has lost over 90% of its value. The cents that we're fretting over are worthless, in any meaningful sense. They're less than the "mill" (one-tenth of a cent) of the late 19th century. Commerce in the 19th century didn't need the mill as anything other than an abstract concept. Today, we don't need the cent as anything other than an abstract concept. Round to the nearest nickel, or dime, or even quarter. Over all your transactions, you'll come out even, because probability dictates that rounding will go in your favor about as often as it goes against you. And when you don't have to wait for a cashier to count cents, you'll save TIME -- a commodity more precious than gold, because you can't purchase extra at any price.[/QUOTE]