Something Completely Different!
 

In New York there is an .08 cent tax on your bagel if you want it sliced.

Sounds like a "wealth-transer fee" scheme to me.

When there's a tax on food served, but not on groceries, they get into that fine line of distinction crap that gets ridiculous sometimes.

Not in upstate here. We get to pay 9 to 10% for slicing that bagel. The state gets 4% the county gets the rest, then the state takes it from the county, and sends it to downstate so they can fund NYC.

I'm just trying to get my head around the concept. I don't think we have that here.

Do you guys tax groceries? We don't but we do tax restaurant meals so when you buy a bagel they need a way to figure out when to tax.

In Italy there are neighbourhood bars where drinks and food are cheaper if you stand at the counter.
You cannot buy at the counter and then sit down at the front because you have not paid the correct amount of tax.
Slightly bewildering for tourists, but a great way to save money if you know about it.
And standing at the counter with a glass of red wine and a calzone is one of the great travelling experiences - like getting on or off a Routemaster* bus while it's still moving.

(* old style red London bus with a permanently open back and a conductor to take fares)

The travel taxes piss me off. Everyone taxes the people who travel to their city whenever they can figure out how to do it.

I forget the exact deal with Las Vegas, but on the car rental, there was like a 6% sales tax plus another roughly 3% tax for some other government entity plus an outrageous 12% or so tax that seemed to be made up. Maybe it was called something like an "airport car rental tax" or something like that. It was basically just a tax on tourists. I should track down that invoice and give you the real numbers. It was unreal. It added up to 20-25% in taxes on the car rental.

That sort of a tax is easy to pass, because you are taxing other people. Few voters will be opposed to taxing the shit out of other people.

...and those being taxed did not have their say, so it's a loss of control.

I used to work in a cafe attached to a health-food grocery store, and we had similar rules governing people who would purchase food in the grocery store and then come sit in the cafe to eat it. Mostly it wasn't a big deal, but at least once a week we'd run into the problem where someone had purchased a bottle of wine from the store and wanted us to open it for them and provide a glass. The best we were allowed to do was put a bottle opener on the counter so they could open it themselves, and point them to the free plastic cups for water over by the soda machine.

I remember when you paid a different price for McMilkshakes depending on whether you ate in or had take-away. Even decent people lied, because they resented paying a higher price for one product.

I don't know whether the tax laws changed or McD's simply increased the cost above the board and classed them all as consumed on the premises.

[Disclaimer - whatever McDonalds did would have conformed to the law of the country and I do not mean to criticise them in any way]

I was in Dallas two weeks ago and the $38 rental car ended up being $57 with taxes.

Just rent something besides a Vega...Who would name a car rental place 'Las Vegas' anyway?