No, No, No. The concept is a trap. Round DOWN to the nickles.

Sure, as a consumer, I like the rounding-down idea better. But this problem doesn't require a global solution. Any merchant is free to implement this, via rounding-up or down or to the nearest or whatever they like. Many do, in fact, some even calculate their prices "just so", to make their totals come out in even increments of 5 or 10 or 25 cents after sales tax is added.

A more global concern is the overall idea of whether pennies should be withdrawn from circulation altogether. Personally, I don't think this is worth it, nor do I think that there's much of a need for the above idea to catch on like wildfire, because the days of spending actual physical cash are rapidly coming to a close. And who (besides my dad) really cares whether a credit or debit or smart-card payment is $10.01 or a "nice round" $10.05?

I was going to post a similar idea myself, but I wasn't quick enough. Posting prices such that the after-tax price is in increments of 5 cents works if nothing is sold by weight. In places such as supermarkets where some things are sold by weight, it doesn't work because when you multiply the round-nickel price by the weight, the result won't be nickel-round. The idea I was going to post was for nickel-rounding cash registers. The way it would work is the register would ring up the total in the usual way and then round it off to the nearest nickel. Since the price would be rounded up half the time and down half the time, on average neither the store nor the customer would lose money. Here is the problem: As far as I know, there are no cash registers on the market that do nickel rounding. So if a supermarket wanted to do this, the cashier would have to do the roundoff in his/her head and speak the rounded-off price to the customer. Many cashiers can't do this in their head. The only way I can think of that this would work is if a large supermarket chain decided to do nickel rounding and demanded that their cash register supplier make a cash register that can handle this. Or if an open-minded cash register company decided to make such a cash register on their own and then sell customers on the benefits of using it. I hate pennies. They are totally useless in this day and age and I hate the hassle of having to store them, roll them up, and periodically take them to the bank. (Yes, I know there are machines you can put the pennies in and trade them for dollars, but IMO that is more trouble than taking them to the bank.) I have read that the real reason why we haven't gotten rid of pennies is that the copper industry is exerting pressure on the government.

Actually, newer US pennies are mostly zinc, with a thin copper coating. . .

I haven't spent a penny in years. Just keep dropping them in cans and letting them accumulate. I have about 50,000 of them now. Someday they are going to entertain the grandchildren.

Leave it up to the individual business, but don't get rid of the penny. We need our lowest denomination, don't we? Besides, as has been noted above, we are becoming more and more "cashless," so it hardly matters anymore.

Rounding to the nearest nickle is easy: if a chashier does it 100 times a day, they will memorize it pretty quickly. As a trick, they can just think to themselves "How many pennies would I give this customer" -- if the answer is 1 or 2, give none, if the answer is 3 or 4, give a nickel.

Another restaurant/bakery was featured today in Toronto's news.It doesn't take or give **ANY** small change whatsoever.

All items are priced to the nearest 25c.A jar of quarters is available for customers to help with their purchases.The system works and customers don't complain., the owner says.

I agree that pennies are virtually worthless in small numbers, and it takes more than 3 cents for the Federal Reserve to produce one penny, but if we do away with pennies, we're encouraging inflation. Not just price inflation, but inflation in general. If pennies are eliminated, nickels won't be far behind. Once nickels go, dimes will almost immediately follow and before we know it, we'll be rounding everything to the nearest half dollar!

Solution? I suggest that we eliminate hard currency and only use electronic (plastic) funds transfer. There's nothing easier than sliding a single card and signing your name. You can't get mugged and robbed of cash; if you lose it, you can report it and won't lose any money; and there's a paper trail if your identity is stolen. Many companies offer identity theft protection up to thousands of dollars, and everything you spend is transferred to the penny, so you never have to worry about losing the ridiculously large amounts of change in your pocket!