{"id":6885,"date":"2015-12-19T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=6885"},"modified":"2015-12-18T16:44:35","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T22:44:35","slug":"carmike-theaters-now-charging-sales-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2015\/12\/carmike-theaters-now-charging-sales-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Carmike theaters now charging sales tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t go to the movies as often as I used to, partially because I no longer have a theater in walking distance, partially because so much out there is uninteresting dreck*. So it was a surprise when I went to see The Force Awakens**\u00a0<\/em>and find that the ticket price was the same as earlier this year \u2014 but now sales tax was tacked on<\/em> to that price.<\/p>\n

The ticket-taker said the change happened “a couple months ago,” which is one of the times of the year the Carmike chain has raised prices in the past. It’s a stealth move to pretend that prices haven’t increased \u2014 much like Mediacom giving one rate but neglecting to mention the “local broadcast surcharge,” “regional sports surcharge,” and sales tax on the franchise fee<\/a>. Now the ticket-takers have to deal with loose change rather than exclusively in quarters, which I’m sure doesn’t make things go any faster.<\/p>\n

Is this an Iowa thing, a national thing, or what? I don’t know. Here’s an article about North Carolina adding a sales tax to admission tickets<\/a> starting Jan. 1, 2014, but there wasn’t any such modification to Iowa law. Regardless, it’s yet another example of average consumers being nickel-and-dimed, and that’s before checking out the highway-robbery prices at concession stands.<\/p>\n

*ENOUGH with the dystopia already. It’s very difficult nowadays not to connect the sheer volume of that genre with the larger national mood, especially since the multi-book series followed by the even-more-multi-film series seems to be the only thing in the young-adult section these days.<\/h5>\n
**Go see it before the Internet spoils it. I had to break my “never on the first weekend” rule to be sure I got the complete experience.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t go to the movies as often as I used to, partially because I no longer have a theater in walking distance, partially because so much out there is uninteresting dreck*. So it was a surprise when I went … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6885"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6888,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6885\/revisions\/6888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}