Alaska House panel advances penny-rounding bill to standardize cash transactions

The Alaska House State Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to advance legislation standardizing how retailers round cash transactions to the nearest five cents.

House Bill 281, sponsored by Rep. Dan Sadler, would require symmetrical rounding for cash purchases. The bill does not apply to digital transactions, sales taxes, income taxes, or property taxes. The U.S. Treasury Department announced in 2025 it would cease manufacturing new pennies, leaving approximately 114 billion pennies in circulation.

Sadler told the committee the bill does not change how sales price or taxes are calculated.

"Not passing this legislation would leave a situation where large retailers or small retailers might begin rounding to their own advantage, taking advantage of consumers," Sadler said. "I think the overall goal here is to make sure that rounding is fair to the consumers and to the businesses."

Sadler told the committee he has observed retailers already creating their own rounding policies. "When I go to stores, I often find signs at the checkout line offering their own homegrown placards explaining what their rounding policies are," he said. "They are not always consistent, which kind of leads me to think we are on the right track here."

Representative Himschoot said a major merchant in her district contacted her last week requesting standardized rounding rules, unaware the legislation existed. She also requested that a printable document be developed that merchants could post at their tills to explain the rounding policy to customers.

"I do not see it as just consumer protection with this bill," Himschoot said. "I see it the other way around as well, where the merchant, you do not want people arguing at the till about a penny or anything else. And so if it is just straightforward, it is better for everybody, for the merchant, for the person actually working the till, for the consumer."

Representative Kevin McCabe noted pennies cost four cents to produce and have a melt value of two cents, making them economically inefficient. Staff for Rep. Sauer said pennies would continue as legal tender like other discontinued denominations such as $2 bills or $1,000 bills, but would become increasingly rare.

The committee opened and closed public testimony with no one appearing to testify on the bill.

According to prior reporting, the National Conference of State Legislatures issued recommendations in November 2025 for cash-rounding standards, which multiple states have adopted. Washington passed similar legislation in March 2026, and Missouri and Florida have advanced comparable bills. Washington's law specifies that rounding applies only to the payment amount and does not change the sales price or taxes owed, which are calculated before rounding. Florida's legislature approved penny-rounding rules with transactions ending in six or seven cents rounding down to five cents, and those ending in eight or nine cents rounding up to the next ten cents.