Legislature approves additional tax holidays

Morning News
Published: July 2, 2008

Before you know it, South Carolina may have a “tax free weekend” for just about every consumer product out there if we aren’t careful.

What started out as a way to help cut costs for families buying back-to-school items has created more and more ideas that will cut our state’s sales tax income.

The Legislature overrode several vetoes by Gov. Mark Sanford of a bill that establishes a sales-tax-free month for energy-efficient appliances and a sales-tax-free weekend for guns.

Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman of Florence told The Associated Press the state doesn’t need to have any more tax-free days.

Tax free days and other exemptions are estimated to have cost the state nearly $3 billion during the past 20 years, Leatherman told the AP.

We have to agree with him and hope that a comprehensive study of all our tax exemptions can be done before anything more is added to the list.

It’s hard to understand the logic behind the exemption on sales tax for guns.

What’s to be gained by it, and who does it benefit?

With the added benefit of energy savings appliances, you can at least figure out the logic on that exemption.

But with just about every new appliance now providing energy savings, it’s hard to justify.

Why just a month? Why not make it year round?

As the sales tax collections continue to drop because of people spending less, we have to remember what we worried about earlier when the General Assembly voted to use sales tax revenue to fund schools.

It’s not a stable source of income and when it drops, what happens to school funding?