Dear Blog Readers,
We have become the kind of blogger we never wanted to be — the kind who has a "read our blog" button on our website but the newest post is months old. We blame Facebook for this — it's so much easier to write something there and we seem to have more followers there than we did here on the blog. Still, we can't quite bring ourselves to give it up altogether yet — so instead, we're posting this little note to explain our lack of current entries. Please do check out our facebook page, we think it's fun, if not quite as long form.
sincerely, the Joie de Blogger.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

that's times .0625, right?

August 1st marks the end of the 5% tax era in Massachusetts. All the amounts we say so automatically - that will be 1.05, 10.50, 36.75, 8.93 - must now be replaced by strange new numbers. The wonderful thing about 5% is that it's so easy to figure out - you just take 10% of the sale and divide it in half. No calculator required. Some of our younger, more calculator dependent employees did find doing it difficult - but it's really not, once you get the hang of it. And it always seemed to impress customers: "You're doing that in your head?" was a common comment. Why not just program the new tax into the cash register, one might ask. An embarrassing admission: our cash register, purchased for $50 from an antique store that was closing, doesn't "do" tax. We love it, but it's a very simple machine. So, calculators in hand, we are ready to chart the brave new world of 6.25%. That will be . . . 1.06, 10.63, 37.18, and 9.03.

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