Few types of goods go directly from the producer manufacturer directly to the store they ' ll be sold at . They typically go to a distribution center , which handles a good chunk of the country coverage area varies wildly . It is not at all uncommon for one center to house goods that will be going to five or six states , and then you need to tack on city taxes in many areas . If you have to keep things separate for each destination , you lose much of the advantage of having warehouses distribution centers . You have to remember that in some ways , each state in the U . S . is treated like a country of its own . But as far as trade goes , that ' s one of the big ones where we ' re a country . If you ' re selling all over Europe , you have to deal with import issues at every country ' s border , so things need to be separated anyway . But you don ' t need to do much extra , beyond filling in the destination address , to ship to Grand Rapids , MI and Toledo , OH and Chicago , IL and many other places but taxes will be different in each of those locations and they will also differ in the cities only a few miles away . Not only do these issues exist , but cities and states can and do change their tax rates . I don ' t have exact numbers on how many cities and other regional entities have their own sales tax , but it may well be into the thousands of options when all are considered . Can you imagine how big of a price sticker you ' d need to cover even a tenth of the country at that ? Now at the store level , that ' s another story . but where ' s the motivation to show a higher price than what everyone else is doing ?