I went to the store today to buy a widget. The price was $3.28. I decided that was too much to pay and came home and looked on the internet. I found the company that makes this widget and after several hours of scouring the reports and white papers on this widget, I learned that the cost to manufacture the item was .0475.
I was livid until I saw the company records. They made a profit, quite a bit of profit as a matter of fact. About 3000% profit. But that is not the entire story. If 3000% was not bad enough, the cost for packaging, boxing, transporting, and ancillary costs to the process is another $1.17. Combined the entire cost from start through the sales is $2.7175. That does not explain the other .56.
There is a State fee on transportation, a green fee on development, a federal fee for waste, a state fee for waste disposal, a federal processing assessment (F.P.A.), a federal highway transportation fee, a federal and state packaging fee disposal assessment, and a national sales assessmnent fee. Total, those fees and assessments equal 56 cents.
The item I held cost 4 cents and the fees were over 56 cents.
Then came the tax. Los Angeles county tax and state tax.
(Even assuming the profit of $1.50 plus the .0475 cost and rounding that up to 5 cents, would give us $1.55 before tax, but no, the fees and assessments are more than the item.)
When it was done, the total charge was $3.84 for the item that cost .0475 to produce.
fees
Posts
