Upstate shoppers still sold on sales-tax break

Emilie Pazdan, 35, waits in line at Target in Greenville after picking out school supplies with her 6-year-old twins, Susannah and Mary Bradley. They got matching backpacks. Brother Sam, 3, won't need school supplies for another couple of years. (Photos by TANYA ACKERMAN/Staff) e-mail this story

All those have been blamed on the state's budget woes. Even so, Greenville shoppers said they weren't ready to give up the annual "holiday" that allows them to buy back-to-school items sales tax free.

"I don't feel bad about it," Patty Dismukes said Sunday as she filled a Target buggy with school supplies. "I think we're taxed to the hilt anyway."

Shoppers scooped up everything from pencils to notebooks before the tax holiday ended Sunday night. They saved 5 percent on each qualified purchase for three days.

Shoppers were expected to save $3.1 million in sales taxes over the extended weekend. The state collects about $2 billion in sales taxes each year.

Emilie Pazdan, 35, used the tax break at Target in Greenville to buy pencils, lunchboxes and backpacks for her twin girls, who are entering first grade. Pazdan said the amount she saved was small, but "every little bit helps."

The holiday, which began in 2000, was the idea of the Democratic former governor, Jim Hodges.

Gov. Mark Sanford, who beat Hodges in 2002, considers the holiday "little more than a political gimmick," said spokesman Will Folks.

Aliza Martinez, 27, and her daughter, Amber McGinnis, 10, take advantage of the tax holiday Sunday by shopping for school supplies at Target on Woodruff Road.

"It's something that politicians can hang their hats on," Folks said. "But at the end of the day, it doesn't substitute for targeted tax reform."

Changing the holiday would be a "legislatively driven process," Folks said.

House speaker David Wilkins said the General Assembly has been satisfied with the tax holiday. Ending it wouldn't solve the state's budget shortfalls, he said.

"This would be a very, very small portion of the deficit we're facing," Wilkins said.

The holiday started as a way to save on back-to-school supplies, such as notebooks, pencils and clothes. But a number of items qualify for the tax break, including adult diapers, corsets and roller skates.

Aliza Martinez, 27, used the holiday to buy school supplies and about $200 in clothes for her daughter, a fifth-grader at Belton Elementary School.

Despite the tax amnesty, Martinez said she'll end up paying one way or the other. She cited the school's $20 registration fee.

"You have to pay the $20 somewhere," she said.

Paul Alongi can be reached at 298-4746.