Sales Tax Holiday

This weekend is Tennessee’s first Sales Tax Holiday weekend. Most clothes, shoes, school supplies, and computers are tax-exempt for the weekend. When I worked at Foley’s (aka Hecht’s here in Tennessee) in Houston one summer of my college days, I worked during their sales tax holiday. It was not the first year they’d had that weekend, so they were prepared. The store had very few items on sale. I found this odd, but saw that most other stores in that mall were also having few sales. I soon found out why. People were there to SHOP, and they didn’t seem to care whether the price they were paying was a good one or not. They were all simply interested in “screwin’ the government, stickin’ it to the man!”

The weekend before the sales tax holiday, the department store (along with many of the other stores in the mall) had a huge sale with almost everything in the store on good discounts. A few people shopped that weekend. The sales tax weekend, people flooded the store in droves. As I was checking out customers’ purchases, almost all of them talked about how “that government ain’t gettin’ any of my money this time.” And while I smiled and nodded, I thought, “But Foley’s sure is getting a lot more of it.”

Now this is Tennessee’s first time around on the sales tax holiday, and it seems like a lot of the stores are having some good sales to go along with the holiday. So I’m sure there will be some good deals to be had (it would certainly be a good idea if you were in the market for something like a computer), and I may even brave the crowds to take advantage of one or two of the smaller sale items. But I guarantee I’ll be making sure I’m actually getting a good deal--as well as screwing over my government, of course.