This year’s Tax-Free weekend begins Friday, Aug. 5, and goes through midnight Sunday, Aug. 7, according to the Texas State Comptroller’s office.
The Comptroller encourages all taxpayers to support Texas businesses while saving money on tax-free purchases of most clothing, footwear, school supplies and backpacks (sold for less than $100) during the annual Tax-Free weekend.
Qualifying items can be purchased tax free from a Texas store or from an online or catalog seller doing business in Texas.
As in year’s past, the sales tax exemption applies only to qualifying items bought during the sales tax holiday. Items purchased before or after the sales tax holiday do not qualify for exemption, and there is no tax refund available.
A large list of qualifying and nonqualifying items can be viewed at comptroller.texas.gov.
During the holiday you can buy qualifying items in-store, online, by telephone, mail, custom order, or any other means. The sale of the item must take place during the specific period.
Additional charges can affect the sales price. This includes delivery, shipping, handling and transportation charges. These charges by the seller are part of the item’s sales price.
Since clothing, backpacks and school supplies have to be less than $100 to qualify, the buyer has to look at the item’s total sales price to determine if you can buy it tax free.
The comptroller offers an example of this situation: For example, you buy a pair of jeans for $95 with a $10 delivery charge for a total price of $105. Because the jeans’ total price is more than $100, tax is due on the entire $105 price.
If a delivery charge is billed per item, and an invoice has both exempt and taxable items, only the qualifying exempt item’s delivery charge is exempt.
If the delivery charge is a flat rate per package, and the amount charged is the same regardless of how many items are included in the package, the total charge can be attributed to any one of the items in the package.
For more information on tax-free weekend, visit https://comptroller.texas.gov/.
