It’s never a good sign when your “fiscally responsible” Republican governor (and “fiscally responsible” I mean not fiscally responsible at all) proposes a sales tax “holiday” gimmick, presumably as a means of boosting the economy.
Sales tax holidays are common across the southern United States – 17 states from Texas to Virginia have them, with the majority of them falling around the time students return to school, according to a July report by the Tax Foundation. Only a few states in the northern half of the United States have them – Iowa, Ohio and Connecticut – though six more states have no sales tax at all.
The holidays are popular with many consumers for offering at least the promise of some relief around one of the major seasons for family spending. But the measures are also panned by policy experts for doing little to boost the economy.
The recent Tax Foundation report found that sales tax holidays do not promote jobs growth but instead merely shift the timing of consumer purchases and complicate the process of collecting taxes from stores. Some retailers may also raise prices during the holiday, reducing consumer savings, the report found.
As has been noted elsewhere, the sales tax “holiday” gimmick proposed by Gov. Walker is nothing more than a blatant attempt to pander for votes leading up to what is certain to be a reelection campaign.
This’ll be paid for by reducing the amount if handouts guven by WEDC, right?
I KID! I KID! We all know they’ll take it out of the schools like they always do.
If they’re pulling this type of misdirection, you know the numbers in the “gold standard” jobs report has to suck when they come out today.
A wonderful idea that benefits families who are ‘big-ticket-item’ shopping around the holidays. Of course, any idea that slows the pace of government reaching into people’s pockets, makes the Left saaaaaaadddddd.
Nice to have a governor that by pursuing ideas like this and the college tuition freeze, is focused on actually helping people with the cost of living.
Actually, Bagger. it’ll cost businesses more than it’ll.help because of staffing and having to redo the registers. And given that it’s only 1 weekend, it’ll make shopping a,pain and not wirth the trouble.
Are you paid to be this foolish, or does it come naturally in Right-trashville?
National chains already have complex sales tax systems to handle this so it’s pretty much a few changes to accommodate WI along with the other states that do this type of thing.
The people who it will really hurt are the small and medium local businesses who are probably using point of sale software licensed or purchased from smaller vendors who will have to make the changes and then reverse them. And since it’s only for certain items and not all taxable merchandise, it will require coding for category level attributes on items…as well as testing for the artificial caps that are being talked about.
Gov. Walker’s proposal is for a very limited time frame just before school starts and there are caps on the value of the items involved. So the savings aren’t that significant for an individual but are a huge loss for the state.
This isn’t how you run government like a business. When a business has an issue meeting its bills it either finds a way to cut expenses or increase revenue or better yet, do both. So to cut revenue in an environment of already declining revenues is absolutely nuts.
If the state GOP wants to help parents afford schools…they should just fucking fund education for crying out loud and stop these silly game.s
Ed- Or they can reverse the cuts the Walker Admin did to the state’s EITC and Homestead credits, which took money out of the pockets of thousands of low-income Wisconsinites.
Oh, and it isn’t too much to ask to make rich people like Diane Hendricks pay taxes for the school districts that produce her future employees. Talk about freeloaders!
This is a law created to make the people who consume goods 364 days a year pay a greater share of the sales tax.