What a cash total rounds to, now that the penny is gone

To the nearest five cents, based on the final digit of the total. A total ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 rounds down; one ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 rounds up; and one ending in 0 or 5 is already there. So $4.37 becomes $4.35, and $4.38 becomes $4.40. This is the method in the federal Common Cents Act and the one Canada used when it withdrew its penny in 2012, and it is chosen because it is symmetric — the ups and downs cancel out rather than favouring either side.

No. Card, electronic transfer, and gift-card payments are still priced to the exact cent. Rounding exists only because exact change is impossible without the penny, and a card has no such problem. This means the same basket legitimately comes to two different amounts depending on how it is paid for — cash might be $21.65 where a card is charged $21.66. That is the intended behaviour, not an error in the register.

The total, and only the total. Every line item, fee, and tax is computed in exact cents first, and rounding happens once, at the very end, to the amount actually handed over. This matters more than it sounds: five items at $0.99 come to $4.95, which is already a nickel and needs no rounding at all — but rounding each item to $1.00 first would collect $5.00. Rounding per item multiplies the effect by the size of the basket.

After. Tax is calculated on the exact pre-rounding amount, and the rounding is applied to the final total. Every state framework enacted so far specifies this, and the federal bill uses the phrase "after-tax". Rounding the subtotal first changes the tax base, which changes the tax owed and puts what the register collected out of step with what gets remitted — a reconciliation problem rather than a rounding one.

Not meaningfully, and this is the question the arithmetic answers best. Symmetric rounding is symmetric by construction: across totals whose final digits are evenly spread it nets to exactly zero. Rounding everything up regardless would be worth about two cents per cash transaction — but that is a price increase charged only to cash customers, no jurisdiction has adopted it for retail, and several state frameworks specify a symmetric method precisely to prevent it. There is one genuinely free move, described in the next answer, and it is worth at most four cents.

Sort of, and it is not the one people go looking for. Rounding collapses a band of five consecutive list prices onto the same cash total — at 0% tax, everything from $19.98 to $20.02 settles to $20.00 in cash. Within that band the cash collected is identical, so the highest price in it is strictly better: the same from cash customers and up to four cents more from every card customer. That is free. What is not free is pricing BELOW a nickel so that rounding "adds" a couple of cents — you collect the same cash and less on card, which is a giveaway wearing the costume of a trick.

Yes. The U.S. Mint stopped producing pennies for circulation on 12 November 2025, but existing pennies remain legal tender indefinitely. Ending production is not demonetisation. A customer paying in exact change with pennies is paying in valid currency, and rounding is only for when exact change cannot be made.

Not federally, not yet. The Common Cents Act passed the House on 14 July 2026 and the Senate on 7 August 2026, but each chamber passed a different bill number, so the House must still pass the Senate version before it can go to the President. The version that passed is permissive — it would allow rounding, not require it. Until then this is governed by state law, which varies, and by ordinary business practice. That was the position as of 4 September 2026 and it is moving; check before relying on it.

It varies, which is the honest answer and the reason this tool will not guess for you. As of 2026, roughly twenty states have legislation permitting businesses to round cash transactions when pennies are unavailable, and Arizona is the only state to make it mandatory. Five states — Arizona, Indiana, New Mexico, Tennessee and Utah — have enacted fuller frameworks, and they agree on the important structural point: tax is calculated on the unrounded amount first. Indiana adds a wrinkle nobody expects, requiring cash payments of state and local taxes to always round down.

No. This computes arithmetic under a rule you select. It does not know where you are, what you sell, or which rule applies to you, and the legal position is changing while you read this. The rounding method is the easy part; whether you may or must apply it, and how it interacts with your sales tax filings, is a question for your own state law and your own accountant.