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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 2635366, member: 27832&quot;]Gasoline is priced in fractional cents. Even if it weren&#039;t, it&#039;s dispensed as a continuous quantity (actually digitized to the nearest 1/1000 of a gallon on the pumps I use), so your actual total price <i>always</i> includes some fraction of a cent. This gets <i>rounded to the nearest cent</i>, not &quot;rounded up always&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sales tax and interest accrual also generate fractional cents. These cents get <i>rounded fairly</i>, not &quot;always up&quot; or &quot;always down&quot;, and in fact <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/301.6313-1" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/301.6313-1" rel="nofollow">there are laws to enforce that</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, nobody cares about single-cent amounts, because each one is trivial -- they only add up over many transactions. My point is that <i>dime</i> amounts are now just as trivial as <i>one-cent</i> amounts were when laws like these were first established.</p><p><br /></p><p>When the US discontinued the half-cent coin in the 1800s, its buying power was equivalent to something like 10 or 15 cents today. We are collectively wasting our time and money by keeping track of nickel-level amounts.</p><p><br /></p><p>We&#039;re overdue for coin reform. I kind of doubt, though, that it&#039;ll ever happen; before we muster the political will to acknowledge the dollar&#039;s devaluation and give up small change, we&#039;ll give up on cash completely. Computers are perfectly happy to account for cents, or even smaller increments.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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