Retailers gear up for sales tax holiday Gray Rohrer, 07/25/2013 - 03:12 PM + responses Florida retailers are readying for a three-day back-to-school sales tax holiday which begins Aug. 2, hoping the discounts will drive traffic to their stores and boost their bottom lines. Clothing items less than $75 and school items less than $15 will not be subject to the state sales tax. The sales tax holiday was first implemented in 1998 and lawmakers have renewed the holiday every year since with the exception of 2002, 2003, 2008 and 2009, although some previous holidays lasted for 10 days. Rick McAllister, president and CEO of the Florida Retail Federation, said that although state economists estimate Florida will lose $30 million in uncollected revenue over the course of the weekend, the foot traffic to stores driven by the holiday will boost sales of other items that aren’t tax exempt, making up for the lost sales tax income. “I can assure you that is not correct,” McAllister said of the state estimate. “The effect on Florida’s economy for this sort of event is substantial.” For the first time, the sales tax holiday will include purchases of laptops and electronic tablets and their accessories marked at $750 or less. Lawmakers approved the high-end item, McAllister said, because computers are such a large part of education. But McAllister also said online purchases that don’t recover sales taxes -- a year-round event and a perennial complaint of big-box store retailers -- aren’t diminishing the effect of the sales tax holiday. “No, we haven’t seen that,” McAllister said of the incursion of online sales into the effect of the sales tax holiday. “I think it’s continuing to grow.” Click here for a full list of items exempt and not exempt from the sales tax from Aug. 2 through Aug. 4.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:50:08 +0000
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