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Barbara's Column
August 2004 #3
Sales tax holiday: Thanks, but no thanks
© by Barbara Anderson
The Salem News
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
What could be more important to a taxpayer activist
than a sales tax holiday?
As it turned out, lots of things. A farmer’s market. A picnic. A
hurricane. A nap. The Olympics.
I marked August 14th on my calendar last year, when the Massachusetts
sales tax holiday passed as part of an "economic stimulus"
bill. I would save as many purchases as possible until then. I started a
list.
It wasn’t much of a list: I have everything I need in the category of
"affordable with or without a sales tax," and am at the age
when I am trying to simplify my life by getting rid of things, not
further accumulating. But I figured by August I’d be out of shampoo
and trash bags.
In March I killed my television. I over-watered a plant that, in
hindsight, shouldn’t have been hanging over an electrical appliance. I
could have watched the little TV in my office til August, but it
couldn’t record cartoons for the grandchildren, or play the videos
their parents send. Also, since I’ve noticed over the years that the
marketplace is in a conspiracy to discontinue items that I like, I was
afraid that by summer it might no longer be possible to find televisions
that have built-in VCR instead of DVD.
So I bought a 20" Broksonic, with built-in VCR and DVD, put it
under a shelf to protect it from dummies, and am television-set for the
rest of my life. Paid the $15.00 sales tax.
Late in July, I found an item in the Sharper Image catalog that I might
want to buy August 14th as an early Christmas gift: a Phone Video
Station for $499.95, sales tax savings, $24.77. I could put one unit in
my house and the other in Nevada, and see my grandchildren anytime for a
little more than the price of one airline ticket.
I called the Burlington store Friday night for information, and learned
that we should have analog phones, and that it’s good to have high
speed internet. I have no idea if I have an analog or a digital phone (I
use my fingers to push the buttons, does that mean anything?) and I know
my son has very iffy dial-up; I decided that this would not be a good
impulse buy.
So my sales tax holiday would be celebrated at just my little local
mall. But first there was my usual Saturday morning trip to the farmer's
market down the street, where I get blueberries and salad fixings. At
noon I went to the Marblehead Republican Town Committee picnic, where I
saw old friends and successfully bid on a Rush Limbaugh "Charter
Member of the Vast Right-Wing conspiracy" mug at the auction.
I’ve always wanted one of those.
Went home to get my coupons for usually sales-taxable items at the
drugstore and grocery store, and while I was there had to watch the
hurricane news to check on Florida relatives and get a forecast for my
partner Chip, who’s on a Maine coast sailing vacation. Then I decided
to take a little nap, which I needed because I’d been up til the wee
hours clipping said coupons from the pile of newspaper inserts that have
accumulated for weeks. OK, months.
When I woke up, I had only TWO HOURS to shop before I had to be home to
tape Olympic gymnastics and bike racing for my son’s family, which
doesn’t have television, just a VCR machine. But I don’t know how to
program my new VCR and besides, I have to be physically there to choose
the events and tape around the commercials; no point in letting the
grandtwins’ first commercials be for Budweiser Light, though I myself
love that Clydesdale colt ad.
Got to the Vinnin Square mall, and discovered I’d forgotten my
coupons. No time to go back; shop shop shop. Sony tapes, shampoo,
cosmetics: drugstore purchases always add up to a surprising total.
Saved $4.00! On to Stop and Shop, fill the cart with paper towels, cat
litter, cat, bird, and squirrel food; never mind the trash bags, the
missing coupon is worth more than 5 percent. Savings, $2.50. Half an
hour left to stop at the photo store, get frames and albums: savings
$1.90. Total savings, $8.40.
A friend’s daughter bought a sofa for her Cambridge apartment, though
she told her mother that the sales tax holiday was a "gift"
from Mayor Menino for the inconvenience city residents experienced from
the Democrat Convention. She wasn’t the only one who was confused; one
person I know bought clothes, not realizing that inexpensive clothing is
never subject to the sale tax. Others bought expensive televisions, not
realizing that items over $2500 were exempt from the sales tax holiday.
Thanks, Legislature. My savings was a couple hundred short of what you
owe me from the income tax rollback that you froze. And it was, I have
to tell you, more trouble than it was worth to me. Hope it was worth
something to merchants, that some of them sold things to people who
wouldn’t have bought them anyhow on another day.
Barbara Anderson is executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation. Her syndicated columns appear weekly in the Salem
News and Lowell Sun; bi-weekly in the Tinytown Gazette; and occasionally in the Providence
Journal and other newspapers.
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