A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience living in a place where US purchases were made without pennies (here it is, if you missed it). Prices were rounded up or down to the nearest nickel, which is why I called it “Americans are going to have to learn to calculate multiples of 5.”
That seems the obvious response to a penny-less world, but apparently it’s not entirely obvious, as this New Hampshire Bulletin story notes. Some places, it seems, want to round everything up.
A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers have proposed legislation in the U.S. House and Senate to require all cash transactions be rounded to the nearest five cents, but neither proposal has made it to a floor vote.
Complicating the issue are the growing number of jurisdictions requiring businesses to accept cash — a move aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who may not have access to credit cards or electronic payment systems.
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