WESTSIDE -- A sales tax holiday next weekend is part of the back-to-school countdown for teachers and parents. School starts Aug. 18 in most Northwest Arkansas districts, and buying supplies is part of how teachers prepare.
Arkansas' sales tax holiday begins at 12:01 a.m. Saturday and ends at 11:59 p.m. Aug. 3.
Items exempt from sales tax include school supplies, art supplies, instructional material, clothing priced at less than $100 an item and clothing accessories priced at less than $50 an item. Sales tax in Northwest Arkansas is about 10 percent of the ticket.
State law requires school districts to provide prekindergarten through sixth-grade teachers a $20 per student budget for the classroom or class activities, or about $500. The $500 required by the state also goes to outfitting the room with learning tools, books or activities.
A Harris Poll survey performed on behalf of Staples, an office supply store, estimated parents will spend $133 on back-to-school supplies for students 13-19 years old. About 53 percent of parents were planning to shop in the month before school starts, according to the survey.
Glue sticks, crayons and colored pencils are the top three school supplies sold nationwide at Walmart, said John Forrest Ales, Walmart spokesman. The retailer runs discounts from July through Labor Day and will have more rollbacks on school supplies this year than last, he said.
"We know, particularly during sales tax week, lots of customers will be in the store, and we want to make it easy for them," Ales said.
Back to school is big business, said Kathy Deck, economist and director of Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas.
Christmas is still the biggest retail season, Deck said, but the season from July through September is a key segment of the year.
Parents will spend an estimated $669 on apparel, shoes, supplies and electronics to send a kindergarten-through-12th-grade student back to school, according to the National Retail Federation's 2014 Back-to-School Survey. Parents spent an average of $634 on back-to-school shopping last year, according to the survey.
The sales tax holiday probably doesn't create sales as much as it moves them around, Deck said.
"If you are a consumer, you only have the money you have, and you only have the credit you have," she said.
Neighboring states have the sales tax holiday weekend and that justified its start in Arkansas in 2011.
"It's not Black Friday," Deck said. "I think the jury is out on whether it generates extra sales."
General News on 07/30/2014