The discount law

Das Rabattgesetz. From 1 January 1934 until 25 July 2001, German law restricted the discounts a retailer could give a consumer. Section 2 capped the cash discount at 3 percent of the price.

Germany was the only country in the European Union with a general prohibition on discounts — the government’s own bill said so when proposing repeal. The stated purpose was to stop customers being tempted too strongly by the size of a reduction.

A seventy-year-old law existed on the premise that a price is a fact, and that moving it around is a trick played on the buyer.

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