Chase Bank's take-a-penny, leave-a-penny jar

It's getting to a point where the State of Louisiana can't even disburse its tax refunds without the money passing through some private intermediary's hands... and maybe a little of it sticking.

The Revenue Department also should require Chase to report how much in fees it makes on the debit cards. There are multiple points when a fee could be charged, and taxpayers could unwittingly leave small amounts on the debit cards. Either way, people are losing money that rightfully belongs to them, and the state shouldn't sanction that. But Byron Henderson, a spokesman for the Revenue Department, said the state doesn't have an interest in monitoring the fees. "It's not our interest in how they're making money," he said.

Chase won't necessarily get a cut of everyone's refund, of course. But the likelihood that they'll pick up some of the leftover balances or ATM fees surely increases at an inverse to the technical sophistication.. and likely income level.. of the individual managing each debit card.

Anyway, it's just fractions of a penny, right?

Peter Gibbons: [Explaining the plan] Alright so when the sub routine compounds the interest it uses all these extra decimal places that just get rounded off. So we simplified the whole thing, we rounded them all down, drop the remainder into an account we opened.
Joanna: [Confused] So you're stealing?
Peter Gibbons: Ah no, you don't understand. It's very complicated. It's uh it's aggregate, so I'm talking about fractions of a penny here. And over time they add up to a lot.
Joanna: Oh okay. So you're gonna be making a lot of money, right?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Right. It's not yours?
Peter Gibbons: Well it becomes ours.
Joanna: How is that not stealing?
Peter Gibbons: [pauses] I don't think I'm explaining this very well.
Joanna: Okay.
Peter Gibbons: Um... the 7-11. You take a penny from the tray, right?
Joanna: From the cripple children?
Peter Gibbons: No that's the jar. I'm talking about the tray. You know the pennies that are for everybody?
Joanna: Oh for everybody. Okay.
Peter Gibbons: Well those are whole pennies, right? I'm just talking about fractions of a penny here. But we do it from a much bigger tray and we do it a couple a million times.