I bought a 4 pack of cans for $11.49 from a store downtown and after tax the price came to $13.27. Is tax really 15.5% on beer these days?
I love the internet: http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/Beer-Excise-Tax-Rates-2015.png Note the difference between Illinois and Wisconsin. Then be glad you don't live in Minnesota! I just happen to have a receipt from a suburban (Lake County) liquor store in my pocket; 7% sales tax. You need to shop in the collar counties.
When possible, do not buy anything including beer in Cook County. Use the surrounding counties. As I recall, the Cook County tax on most good is about to go over 10%. There are also over entertainment and "vice" taxes that I can't begin to explain.
The sales tax is Cook County is indeed about to rise to 10.25% (I believe), making it the highest in the country. EVERYBODY COME TO CHICAGO, WE NEED YOUR MONEY
I love the internet too, but after including the excise tax the math does not add up. $11.49 plus cook county sales tax of 9.25% = $12.56. The excise tax on a 4pk of 16 cans, or a half gallon, would be $0.12 bringing the total to $12.68. I was wondering what tax makes up the $0.59 cent difference ?
Store profit? I've compared receipts on beer purchases for the same amount at two different stores in the same city and saw a difference under 'tax'. Not sure why this would be the case but one of the stores did seem a bit shadier (the other was a Binny's). I don't know enough about retail POS to know whether the 'tax' bit on each receipt is some factor which the store can amend or not but if they can it would not surprise me to see this occur.
