Virginia sales tax weekend underway

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Virginia retailers are expecting to have a busy weekend.

Originally, Virginia’s sales tax holiday weekend was in August, but shoppers can expect to see tax-free bills on certain items when they hit the stores October 20-22, 2023.

There’s a long list of items that’ll be included – but the main things are school supplies, clothes and shoes, and emergency preparedness products. Shoppers won’t be required to pay typical 5.3% sales tax rate on those items starting Friday and running through the weekend.

And if you didn’t know – you’re not alone.

When calling around to ask local stores in our hometowns if they were participating in this weekend, they didn’t know the dates had changed and had to quickly prepare.

“I would’ve liked to know a little sooner, I would say next time around just so we could maybe get a better display going or maybe a better assortment of inventory for it,” said Drew Deeds, store manager of Walkabout Outfitters in Downtown Roanoke.

We talked about how they’re preparing for shoppers.

“We got signage we’re gonna put out for it, and we’ve got some different supplies that qualify for tax-free, we’re going to have a table set up that’s sort of a tax-free back-to-school kind of theme table for anything at our store that qualifies, because it’s a specific set of items that qualify for it,” explained Deeds.

Here’s how it’ll work-

Qualified school supplies that cost $20 or less per item will be tax free.

The same goes for clothing and shoes off $100 or less per item.

Hurricane preparedness items will be tax-free if they are $60 and under.

Drew says he’s expecting Saturday to be the busiest day of the entire weekend.

“So that’s probably when it’s going to be the biggest for us, but probably going into Friday too. It’s probably going to be a big day,” said Deeds.

Virginia Tech business professor Abdul Al Jumaily doesn’t think the holiday goes far enough to help people.

“So getting a tax holiday for three days, I don’t think it will have any sort of significant or impactful effects on consumers’ wallets. Again, this is for $20 worth of school supplies and $100 worth of garments. So what are we going to save, seven bucks, so it’s not really going to hit,” said Jumaily.

He says if the state really wants to promote economic growth and fix inflation problems, it should get rid of sales tax all together.

“I think the state tax holiday is a gimmick; I don’t think it’s an effective or an efficient use of the state’s time,” explained Jumaily.

Here is a list of qualifying items; tax.virginia.gov/virginia-sales-tax-holiday

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