Get Ready To Shop 'Til You Drop During Florida's Back-To-School Sales Tax Holiday

MIAMI (CBSMiami) –  Get ready to shop till you drop starting this weekend as the Florida launches its annual Back-To-School Sales Tax Holiday, before students head back to school.

This year's tax holiday runs for 10 days. It begins Saturday, July 31 and runs through Monday, August 9.

Retailers anticipate a surge in shopping since kids students who stayed home for online learning last year now need new clothes, shoes, backpacks and other supplies.

The Back to School sales tax holiday means anyone who buys school supplies will get a break from the state's 6% sales tax which can add up to big savings for families as the summer break ends and the new school year begins.

So what items are tax free?

• Clothing, footwear, and certain accessories selling for $60 or less per item.
• School supplies selling for $15 or less per item.
• The first $1,000 of the sales price of personal computers and certain computer-related accessories, when purchased for noncommercial home or personal use.

Among the allowed school supplies are the following: binders, calculators, colored pencils, crayons, pens, construction paper, lunch boxes, notebook filler paper, glue, paste, poster paper, rulers and scissors.

Examples of taxable school supplies include: correction tape-fluid-pens; masking tape; printer and computer paper; staplers and staples.

This is the second consecutive year that shoppers have been able to avoid paying sales taxes on the first $1,000 of the price of computers. Cell phones don't qualify as computer electronics.

Click here for more information about the sales tax holiday, and for lists of specific items and their taxable status.

The holiday is part of a $196.3 million tax package that state lawmakers approved in April.

Florida first offered a back-to-school tax holiday in 1998, and 10-day discount periods have only been held in 2007 and 2015. Last year, the holiday lasted three days, the same as in 2016, 2017 and 2018. The holiday was offered for five days in 2019.