Yes, we’re referring to the annual August sales tax holiday for qualified school purchases in which the state won’t collect its 6 percent sales tax over a long weekend. All totaled, South Carolina consumers were expected to save about $3 million, which averages to about 64 cents a person for the 4.7 million people who live in the Palmetto State. [Oddly, the state Department of Revenue doesn’t keep up with how much revenue is lost during the holiday, but estimates the savings for consumers based on research on retailers who sold school supplies.]
While people who spent a couple of hundred dollars on back-to-school stuff got $12 in savings, most people didn’t get anything because they don’t have kids in school or they didn’t use the opportunity to buy bedspreads and linens, both of which were exempt from tax over the weekend. Also exempt: clothing, shoes, pencils, paper, notebooks, bookbags, computers and printers. You can even avoid taxes on scarves, pillows, bandanas, bridal gowns, musical instruments and skin-diving suits.
What rankles about this holiday is that it is an out-and-out gimmick to make politicians look like they’re really doing something when they’re not.  For most South Carolinians, it really doesn’t have a big impact for at least two reasons.
First, stores are frothing at the mouth at this time of the year with unbelievable deals that offer far more in savings than six cents on the dollar to get folks inside to buy pencils, clothes, backpacks and the like. The sales tax holiday is a “broadus,” or a little bit extra to use a Gullah word. It’s not the incentive for shopping.
Second, the tax holiday is nothing but a bribe that lawmakers use to make you think that they’re making the regressive sales tax a lot fairer. A smarter thing to do than having three days free of tax is to figure out ways (i.e., real sales tax reform by reducing the billions of dollars in exemptions) so that the overall rate can be lowered — 365 days a year.
Grrrrr. We’ve been opposed to sales tax holidays for a long time because they’re bad policy. Lawmakers should do something big to fix taxes, not dole out crumbs.
Ford Needs To Get Out Of The Way
The fragrant allure of politics must be too much for former state Sen. Robert Ford, the Charleston Democrat who resigned this year for what he maintains were health reasons. Regardless of how loudly Ford squawks about his health being to blame, it’s just a cover. He resigned because serious ethics allegations against him were about to come home to roost. He still must face them.
For most people who resign from office, the dingy, gray cloud of shame is enough to keep them out of politics, unless you’re New Yorker Anthony Weiner or our own Robert Ford. As several candidates head toward an Aug. 13 Democratic primary for Ford’s old seat, he pumps out frequent emails to keep in the fray. There’s one to remind Senate Ethics Committee members of all the good things he’s done over the years for the community. There’s another of him in photos from a fish fry. And then there are the multiple emails endorsing his chosen candidate, a former city council member with ties to the Republican Party.
Ford, also known for working more closely with Republicans than some Democrats found comfortable, should realize he can’t hand-pick a winner for the seat he left in disgrace.  He’s had his chance in the Senate. Now he needs to get out of the way.
 
Andy Brack is publisher of Statehouse Report and Charleston Currents. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com
 
 

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