Consumers don't pay sales taxes; businesses do.

that one critical piece of obvious information didn't cross my mind.

However, and this just occurred to me, there must be some specific legislation that gives businesses the right to pass along that tax because if they just charged the equivalent of the item's cost and the tax, they'd end up owing more tax. As a concrete example, say you purchased something for $10 and there's 10% sales tax. The way we normally do it, that would mean that you'd end up paying $11 and one of those dollars would go to the government. But if a business charged $11 and didn't claim sales tax in there, then he'd be responsible for remitting 10% of $11, which would be $1.10. Hmmm. Doesn't really change my point either way; it just occurred to me.