As someone who has worked for years on the pricing team at Kohl's, mind you not in setting the prices myself but in entering them into the system, I can 100% confirm this happens where they increase the list price and put the sale price at the previous list price. For new merchandise, they also count the days the product is in transit to the stores and the days it sits in the back room waiting to be displayed as "off sale" days so that they can more quickly put the merchandise "on sale" when it is finally made available to purchase.