North Carolina parents hoping to shave a few dollars on back-to-school gear for their kids will have to do so without the annual North Carolina Tax Holiday weekend for the first time in more than a decade.
The holiday, which historically occurred during the first weekend in August, was repealed in July 2013 when North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed the tax reform bill into law.
With no tax holiday this weekend, Annex Surf Supply manager Chris Batten said the team at the Annex and Surf City Surf Shop are left to guess if there will be a downturn in sales. Although the Annex had only experienced one tax holiday, Batten said the weekend was always a good revenue generator for Surf City.
“That was traditionally a great weekend for us,” Batten said. “Shoppers would wait for that time and we knew on that weekend people would actually be buying instead of window shopping.”
The state tax holiday was one of the few remaining benchmarks for retailers to measure back-to-school sales, Batten said, adding that an increase in the number of year-round and alternatively scheduled schools had spread those sales out already.
“It is just like everything else out in the retail world right now,” he said. “It is a crazy retail market now and we always have to do new things to keep people interested.”
Along with the August tax holiday, North Carolina also repealed the tax holiday in November that was reserved for the purchase of energy-efficient appliances.
Both South Carolina and Virginia still have back-to-school tax holiday weekends in August.
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