How Do We View the Penny Now?

A relatively new article from Fox Business News brings the debate of keeping or ditching the penny forward once again.  It's more of the same, but there are some post-Canadian-penny comments, and a little more from organizations that depend on donations to continue operating.

pennyfreebiz

So, pennyfreebiz.com is a website businesses can join to support not using pennies in their transactions.  Though there are thousands and thousands of businesses that don't use pennies, not all of them are members of this site.  The site does have some information on how to transition to a penny free business and a list of retail software that will round to the nearest nickel for you.  If you're a business owner and hate pennies, go check it out to get started on switching over, or join the movement to show your support.

Rounding Rules

Did you know that there are rounding rules in place now for all transactions in the US?  In fact, I'm sure every country has its rounding rules, but I'm not going to check them all.  The rounding rules are governed by the state in which you live, because there is no federal sales tax, only state and local sales tax. The basic rule is that for all taxable sales, multiply the total sales amount (rounded to the nearest cent) by the sales tax rate and carry it out to 3 decimal places.  If the digit in the thousandths place is 5 or higher, round up to the nearest cent. If it is 4 or lower, round down to the nearest cent.
In fact, your listed prices don't even have to be in whole cents. You could sell items for $3.46309 if you wanted.  But then you must subtotal the entire bill, rounding to whole cents and apply your sales tax to that amount and then round the grand total to the nearest cent.  The final price always has to be in whole cents, because that is the lowest denomination with which someone can pay.  Go look at your local gas station and see the price per gallon at $3.699 or some other amount with 9/10th of a penny on the end.  Or check your natural gas or electric bill.  Your price for natural gas most likely includes some fractions of a cent per CCF (100 cubic feet), and your electric bill includes fractions of cents per kWh (kilowatt hour).  But of course, your bill is always rounded off to the nearest cent.
Since we are rounding already, why not round to a denomination that is more convenient for consumers and retailers?  Like the nearest 5 cent increment, or even better the nearest 25 cent increment. We need to lay the penny to rest, and relegate it to a nice bit of nostalgia.

Do you pick up pennies off the ground?

So, we've all heard the phrase about having good luck when we pick up a penny off the ground. The phrase has been around almost as long as the penny has.  Of course as the purchasing power of the penny declined, additional superstitions were added, such as only "heads up" pennies were lucky, and the "tails up" pennies should either be turned over to "heads up" so the next person to come by could receive the luck, or given immediately to someone else so that they could receive the luck, or other variations.  Now you'd have to find a $5 or $10 bill to get the same purchasing power as the penny of the 1800's.  No doubt you'd feel lucky if you found that much money on the ground.  Way back then, it was almost unheard of to find money on the ground, so it was indeed lucky.  Now you can find pennies every day just by walking down the street.  So, do you receive the same amount of luck and gratification today, as the people back in the 1800's had when they were fortunate enough to find a penny and pick it up?  Do you even bother stooping down to pick up those pennies?  If I'm not in a hurry, I'll usually pick up those pennies.  Not because I think they are worth so much, but because each penny I return to circulation, is 2 cents I save the government (and myself) paying to replace it. So does anyone else pick up pennies out there and why?