I have now heard this rumor from three different people, each of which has a different version which sets off my urban legend alert, so I’ll throw it out here.
The gist of it is that with the economy in the toilet, Congress (or the California legislature depending on the story) is talking about suspending sales tax after Thanksgiving to stimulate spending. Of course, I’ve heard this will last for 1 day, a week, and even 10 days from these different people, each of which SWEARS they heard it on the news. I’m calling bullshit on the whole lot of them, especially since I listen to the news fairly regularly and haven’t heard squat about this. In the interest of not making an idiot of myself, however, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t some merit to this rumor.
Anyone heard of this happening? The version I heard about just California getting it sounds especially lame, the reason being that we are even harder hit here because of the past power problems…
True. There was a thread on this just recently, but I don’t have time to search right now. Initially, it was proposed that Congress would reimburse states for sales taxes lost for the ten days after Thanksgiving. There are a number of problems with this, most notably that states would have to take legislative action, and most states aren’t in session right now.
The most recent proposal was for the same thing, ten days before Christmas (presumably to allow states time to call special sessions). I believe this was voted on today, though I’m not sure whether it was in the House or Senate, and on the floor or in committee.
Long and short of it is, it is a real (arguably stupid, though obviously not arguably in this forum) proposal.
It happens. The state of Texas, just crammed with money because of W’s fiscal ingenuity (I’ll be here all week), declared a sales tax holiday as recently as August. Do a Google on “sales tax holiday” and see what comes up.