Is Chipotle Stealing Pennies?

Oh, Chipotle. The restaurant has been caught with its hands in the salsa container when an amateur sleuth noticed that it's been rounding its bills to eliminate pennies:

On several recent shopping trips, Jayson Greenberg wondered what the deal was with pennies — or the lack thereof — at Chipotle Mexican Grill in West Caldwell.

"The receipts at the Chipotle in West Caldwell don’t add up when there are odd amounts involved," he said. [...]

On the first, dated July 13, the nine items added up to $32.93. There was $2.31 in tax. The total should have been $35.24, but next to the "total" line on the receipt, it said $35.25.
The next receipt, with the same sale date, showed a subtotal of $8.64. The tax was $0.60, so the grand total should have been $9.24. But no. With Chipotle-style math, the total was $9.25.

The third receipt, dated July 17, had a subtotal of $17.75 and tax of $1.24. The total? $19.00, but elementary school students would have come up with $18.99.

Karin Price Mueller of The Star-Ledger has more: Link

Is rounding the bill to eliminate pennies theft or a reasonable retail policy?



What they don't seem to notice until much later in the article is that it also rounds down; the first three examples all end in 4 or 9. I think we should eliminate the penny, nickel, and dime completely, and just round to the nearest quarter. A quarter has the same value now as the penny did when we eliminated the half-penny.
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Here in Denmark we somewhat recently abolished the use of our 25 øre coin (0.25 DKK, approx $0.05 USD), so now our lowest denomination is 50 øre. (0.50 DKK, approx $0.10 USD). Honestly, we're better off for it, nobody wants to carry around those small denominations. They're useless, really. A few pennies more or less won't make any noticable difference to anyone; especially if rounding is done fairly.
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The issue likely has more to do with the point of sale rounding partial cents rather than Chipotle knowingly stealing pennies. Assuming a 7% tax rate, the tax in the last example was not 1.24, but 1.2425. Some POS systems always round up, others use bankers rounding, and others use normal mathematical rounding. The issue of rounding is way less interesting than you may think, but it's also likely more complex than you've ever dreamed.
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I hated trying to work out the price of things in the US. Annoying little pennies and random unlisted taxes as you pass through states. In Aus all prices must include taxes, and everything rounds to the nearest 5c when dealing in cash.
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