Shorter Holiday Means Less Sales Tax Hit for State
August 9th, 2016 by flanewsDid you get the savings while you could? Florida’s back to schools sales tax holiday wrapped up over the weekend, and as Matt Galka tells us, the shorter tax free period meant less money taken from the state’s bottom line.
Ginny Grimsley and her daughter are two of the millions of customers that got in on the back to school sales tax holiday this past weekend.
“I was good, I was like oh good! Sales tax holiday, that will save us,” she said.
The usually annual break from sales tax is a big hit with Floridians, and the state budget usually takes a hit because of it.
This latest back to school sales holiday cost the state around 28 million dollars, and that’s way down from last year’s 10 day sales tax holiday, which economists say put the state in the red about 56 million bucks.
The Florida Retail Federation says even though the holiday was shorter this year business didn’t suffer.
“Apparently there was a lot of traffic, there were some complaints that the lines were pretty long in some stores,” said James Miller.
And the hope for many retailers is that the holiday keeps customers coming back.
“A lot of businesses actually added additional discounts and savings on top of the sales tax holiday which was a really wise and savvy move on their part to get more people into the stores and more eyeballs on their merchandise,” said Miller.
Last year’s ten day sales tax holiday was called the exception and not the norm. The state usually opts for three day holidays.
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