If you show a Connecticut customer a price, that price has to be the price they actually pay — minus only taxes and government-imposed fees.
Not the starting price. Not the price before a mandatory service charge. Not the "$99/night + $45 resort fee + $22.50 service charge" that totals $166.50 at checkout. Starting July 1, 2026, Connecticut requires that the first price you advertise, display, or offer is the total price including every fee you require the buyer to pay. If your website, menu board, Airbnb listing, event page, or mailed coupon still drips fees in at the final step, the law treats it as a deceptive practice — no matter how small your business is or where you are located.
Connecticut is not an outlier. It is the latest state to codify what federal regulators have been signaling for three years. The practical question for owners is not whether to comply, but how to rewire your pricing displays, checkout flows, and bookkeeping before enforcement starts.
What Changed on July 1, 2026
Connecticut Senate Bill 3, enacted in 2025 as part of a broader consumer protection package signed by Governor Ned Lamont, takes effect July 1, 2026. The AG's office and the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) have flagged it as one of the most consequential changes for any business that advertises a price to Connecticut consumers.
The core rule is simple:
Businesses advertising goods or services must include all mandatory fees, charges, and costs in the advertised price, excluding taxes and fees imposed by a government.
It sounds obvious, but it reverses how many small businesses have priced for years — leading with a low headline price and adding required charges later. Under the new standard, that reverse is illegal.
What must be included
- Service fees
- Convenience fees
- Resort, facility, or cleaning fees you require
- Processing or handling charges the customer cannot decline
- Any other amount the buyer must pay to complete the transaction
If the customer cannot say no to it, it belongs inside the headline price.
What may be excluded
- Taxes (sales tax, occupancy tax, etc.)
- Fees imposed by a government entity (and passed through at cost)
- Genuinely optional add-ons that the consumer affirmatively selects (extra baggage, premium seating upgrade, add-on warranty)
Some guidance notes that even certain shipping charges may need to be inside the advertised total if they are mandatory — unlike a few other states. When in doubt, include it. The safe harbor is transparency at first sight, not disclosure at checkout.
The law also contains a parallel provision for long-term rental housing: advertisements for a rental unit must include every fee or charge the tenant will be required to pay, with narrow exceptions such as pet fees and certain utility costs. Landlords and property managers who tack on mandatory trash, amenities, or technology fees after quoting rent are within the same transparency regime.
Who Has to Comply?
Not just Connecticut-based companies. The trigger is advertising to a Connecticut resident. If your website, marketplace listing, email, delivery menu, booking platform, or paid ad can be seen by someone in Connecticut — and you know or should know it can — you fall within the law's reach.
That matters because the statute is deliberately broad:
- Hospitality and short-term rentals — hotel, inn, short-term rental, campground, resort listings
- Live events and entertainment — tickets, festivals, theater, sports, concerts booked through your own site or a platform
- Food service and delivery — restaurant delivery, takeout, catering, third-party marketplace fees you require
- Retail and e-commerce — product pages, landing pages, social ads, marketplace storefronts
- Professional and personal services — gym memberships, cleaning services, auto repair estimates, appointment-based services with mandatory charges
If you set the price, you own compliance — even when a platform handles checkout. Connecticut explicitly allows the Attorney General to pursue violations under the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), which applies to any trade or commerce in the state.
Why This Is Bigger Than Connecticut
The Federal Trade Commission spent 2022–2024 pursuing a sweeping junk-fee rule. The final FTC rule, effective May 12, 2025, ended up narrow: it covers only live-event ticketing and short-term lodging, and imposes penalties of $51,744–$53,088 per violation (indexed annually) while requiring sellers to show the total price early and explain optional charges clearly.
Congress did not pass a national pricing-transparency law. States filled the gap — and they went farther than the FTC.
As of mid-2026:
- California, Colorado (effective 2026), Connecticut (July 1, 2026), Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, and Virginia have adopted cross-industry all-in pricing statutes or regulations.
- Others have taken a sector-specific approach: Maryland and New York target ticketing, while Connecticut may sweep in mandatory shipping charges that sister states exclude.
- Massachusetts goes further still, requiring disclosure of a product's "maximum price" including mandatory and optional charges in some contexts.
For a multi-state seller the patchwork is the point. Connecticut's standard is among the broadest — if you design your pricing display to satisfy Connecticut (include every mandatory charge at first glance, exclude only taxes/government fees, explain optional add-ons separately), you are close to compliant everywhere else. If you design only for the narrow federal rule, you will still be exposed in Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and a growing list of states.
Enforcement is not theoretical. State AGs have publicly flagged junk-fee enforcement as a priority. Minnesota authorizes up to $25,000 per violation, Massachusetts $5,000 per offense, and the Connecticut Attorney General is already pursuing $39 million in a single pending case. Under Connecticut's UDAP authority, each non-compliant advertisement can be a separate violation.
The Three Mistakes That Most Small Businesses Make
1. Drip pricing — revealing the real total only at checkout
This is the classic violation. Example: a vacation rental shows "$199/night" on search results and property cards, then adds a $65 cleaning fee, a $35 facility charge, and a $22.50 service fee on the final payment page. Under all-in pricing, the searchable price must have been $321.50 (or $199 + $65 + $35 + $22.50 shown together as a total) from the first display.
Fix: Reverse your flow. Calculate the mandatory total first, display it as the headline price everywhere, and then itemize beneath it if you wish: "$321.50 total (includes $199 base + $65 cleaning fee + $35 facility charge + $22.50 service fee, plus tax)."
Itemization is allowed and often helpful for trust — adding fees after the total is not.
2. Labeling a mandatory fee as if it were a tax or government charge
A "county tourism surcharge" that is not actually imposed by a government, or a "regulatory cost recovery fee" you set yourself, cannot be excluded from the advertised price. Only amounts genuinely imposed by government and passed through at cost may sit outside the total.
Fix: Audit every line item in your checkout labeled "tax," "fee," or "surcharge." For each one, ask: could the customer decline this and still buy the product? If no, and it is not a government levy, fold it into the advertised total.
3. Relying on a disclosure that comes too late
Fine print at the bottom of the page, a hover tooltip, or a line that appears only after the customer enters payment information does not satisfy "clear and conspicuous" at the time and location the price is first shown. Connecticut's legislative history emphasizes that the total must be visible where the price is advertised — not buried.
Fix: Place the total price in the same font, size, and visual proximity as the advertised price. If you list a price on Google Shopping, Instagram, Etsy, a delivery marketplace, or a mailed flyer, that listing must carry the all-in total.
A Practical Compliance Checklist Before July 1
You do not need a legal department to do this well. You need one afternoon and control over where prices appear.
1. Map every place you display a price
Make a list. Websites, booking engines, marketplaces (Etsy, Amazon, Faire, Airbnb, Vrbo), delivery platforms (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Toast), POS menus, printed takeout menus, email offers, SMS campaigns, Google Business Profile, social ads, coupon mailers, event pages. For each, note whether the price shown today includes all mandatory fees.
This is also your moment to catch platforms that add fees on your behalf. If a marketplace tacks on a service fee you require the customer to pay, you are responsible for including it in the advertised figure you control.
2. Rewrite your price formula
For each product or service, compute:
All-in advertised price = base price + all mandatory fees you control + mandatory fees a platform collects on your behalf (exclude only sales/occupancy tax and government-imposed fees).
Show that number as the headline. Optionally, show a breakdown directly beneath it.
Restaurant example: A $16 bowl advertised for delivery must be shown as "$19.50 including service and small-order fees" if you add a $2 delivery service charge and a $1.50 small-order fee — with tax extra.
Ticket example: A $40 general-admission ticket with a $6 venue charge and $4 processing fee must be listed as "$50 total" on every poster, email, and ticketing page — not "$40 + fees."
Rental example: A $1,800/month apartment with a $75 mandatory trash/amenity package must be advertised as "$1,875/month" (plus tax/government charges if applicable), not "$1,800 + fees."
3. Fix your checkout and receipt templates
Update e-commerce, booking, and POS systems to:
- Present the total price no later than the first checkout step where a price appears
- Describe the nature, purpose, and amount of any optional charges separately before the buyer agrees
- Print receipts that tie back to the advertised total — customers who compare the ad to the receipt should see the same total (plus tax)
If your POS cannot display the all-in price automatically, add a calculated "all-in" display field or a note template until the vendor ships an update.
4. Train your team on what to say
Staff who quote prices by phone, text, DM, or in person are advertising. A front-desk quote of "$199/night" that omits a mandatory resort charge is the same violation as a website that does it. Create a one-line script: "Our all-in price is $X including all required fees, plus tax. Optional add-ons are..."
5. Update your refund and cancellation language
Connecticut's package also tightens automatic renewal notices (annual reminder to cancel) and repair-related obligations. While those provisions are separate, they share a theme: clearer renewal terms and fewer surprise charges improve renewal conversion anyway. Pair your pricing fix with a quick renewal audit — are customers clearly told when they will be charged, how much, and how to cancel before the renewal date?
How This Hits Your Books
All-in pricing does not change how much you earn — it changes when you acknowledge what the customer paid for. That has real bookkeeping consequences.
Stop booking mandatory fees as separate revenue. If a $149 room with a $35 mandatory resort fee must be advertised as $184, your books should treat $184 as the transaction's gross consideration. Use sub-accounts for analysis (Sales:Room, Sales:Resort Fee) but reconcile to the advertised total, not the old base price. During an audit — whether by the Department of Revenue, a marketplace under a 1099-K reconciliation, or a customer dispute — the advertised total and the settled total must match.
Keep the tax distinction clean. Since taxes are the one category you may show separately, your POS and e-commerce settlement must still break them out correctly. The new pricing display does not merge taxable and non-taxable amounts; it merely moves mandatory non-tax charges inside the headline. Configure tax codes so that resort, service, and facility charges are taxed as your state's rules require (in Connecticut, many mandatory fees are part of the taxable sales price). Consult your CPA on taxability — the transparency law and the sales-tax law answer two different questions.
Reconcile platform payouts differently. When a marketplace reports a 1099-K gross figure and then nets out service and payment fees before paying you, your books need both legs: gross revenue at the all-in advertised price, marketplace fees as an expense, and net cash deposited. The gross figure is what Connecticut asked you to advertise; the net figure is what hit the bank. Do not book the net as revenue — you will understate income and lose the deduction for fees.
Track mandatory versus optional charges separately. The legal distinction between "must pay to buy" and "customer chose to add" is also an accounting distinction. Mandatory charges stay bundled with the product's revenue; optional upgrades are their own line items. This segmentation helps you measure true margin on the core product versus attachment of optional add-ons.
If you use plain-text or spreadsheet accounting, add two tags now — e.g., ct-all-in and optional-add-on — so that every fee-bearing sale carries an audit trail of what was inside the advertised total and what was elected later. That trail is your best defense if a regulator asks how you calculated the price first shown to a Connecticut customer.
What Enforcement Looks Like
Connecticut will enforce through CUTPA, the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act, which already carries civil penalties, restitution, and injunctive authority. While the SB 3 penalty structure is still being interpreted through guidance and enforcement actions, the broader UDAP context is clear: each separate advertisement — each product page, each email, each marketplace listing — can be a separate violation, and penalties accrue per violation.
Two practical signals matter for small businesses:
- You will be expected to have fixed forward, not just refunded backward. Prior state settlements in hospitality and ticketing have required businesses not only to pay restitution for past drip-pricing but to redesign their pricing displays and submit compliance reports.
- Platforms do not shield you. Using Etsy, Shopify, Toast, Square Online, Airbnb, or a ticketing partner satisfies the FTC's narrow rule for that partner's flow, but Connecticut still looks to you for the price you published. Verify that each channel you use can carry your all-in price correctly — and turn off channels that cannot until they can.
Get Compliant in One Pass
Block 30 minutes this week for a sweep:
- Pick your top 10 advertised prices — your most-viewed product pages, listings, menu items, or ticket types.
- For each, write the all-in number using the formula above and compare it to what the customer sees today at first glance.
- Raise the headline to the all-in total everywhere it appears, or amend the display to show the breakdown anchored to the total.
- Snapshot your changes — screenshots or PDFs of each price location with a timestamp. This is your compliance record.
- Set a recurring check — add "price-display audit" to your monthly close checklist alongside bank reconciliation and sales-tax filing. New products, seasonal menus, and holiday surcharges routinely reintroduce the same mistake.
If you sell into California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, or other all-in states already, apply the Connecticut standard once across all locations. You will save yourself the second rebuild when the next state starts enforcement.
Simplify Your Financial Management
Shifting to all-in pricing is partly a legal fix and partly a bookkeeping upgrade — you are committing to show one honest total everywhere a price appears and to keep the ledger consistent with that total. Beancount.io gives you plain-text accounting that is transparent, version-controlled, and AI-ready, so your revenue, fee, and tax accounts reconcile to the same totals your customers saw. Get started for free and see why developers and finance professionals are switching to plain-text accounting.