Virginia Governor Tim Kaine signed the tax holiday bill sent to him by the General Assembly. I wrote against it when it first came up, and my opinion is the same. It’s nothing more than politics playing to a small-minded crowd, both in the General Assembly and among the Virginia citizenry.
Regarding the specifics of what Gov. Kaine signed, this is absurd:
The sales tax holiday will occur on the first Friday/Saturday/Sunday in August. Consumers will not have to pay taxes on school supplies that cost $20 or less an item and on clothing and shoes that cost $100 or less an item. For that weekend, businesses also can choose to pay the tax on other items for their customers and advertise those items as tax-free, a practice normally illegal.
It may be a sales tax holiday for residents, but will it significantly increase sales? And will those sales offset computer system changes for retailers? Who qualifies for each retailer what meets the criteria and what doesn’t? I assume the increased sales will offset costs, but I’m guessing. Somehow, I suspect that’s what the General Assembly did when it proposed the change. We don’t get numbers to support claims. Instead, we get populist nonsense.
“The back-to-school sales tax holiday is relatively modest in its fiscal impact, but it will make a huge difference for working families with school-age children,” Kaine said.
It’s nothing major, but it helps poor people. That makes no sense. When I was a kid, we were poor enough that we fell into Gov. Kaine’s “poor people” category. There is no way a sales tax holiday would’ve helped significantly. I wasn’t getting expensive wardrobes and piles of supplies. I got the basics to cover what I’d outgrown or to fill in the gaps in my supplies where I’d used up all the pages in notebooks. How different are poor people today?
Of course, the bill’s sponsor betrayed Gov. Kaine’s logic, showing the both sides of the aisle can have ludicrous reasoning.
Sen. Ryan T. McDougle (R-Hanover), the bill’s Senate sponsor, said he believes the state actually will make money during the holiday because customers will respond to holiday ads and end up purchasing taxed items as well.
“This will draw people from other states to purchase goods in Virginia,” he said. “It’s good for families and parents and good for business.”
So, is it for poor people or is it to raise state revenue? If they’re poor, they’re not buying extras just because they saved a few pennies on sales tax. If it’s really meant to raise revenue, wouldn’t a regular sales tax cut work better, extending the greed fun all year?
Idiots, every one of them.