Marylanders will be able to buy certain clothing and footwear with a retail price under $100 tax-free, starting Sunday, Aug. 11, through Saturday, Aug. 17, the Maryland Comptroller’s Office has announced.
Weeks like this—or just weekends, as WalMart points out—are happening in 18 states this year, usually right before school starts. They’re designed by politicians to give families a little bit of a break as they get their kids ready for school, although a few states have no sales tax on clothing anyway, regardless of the purchase price.
Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon don’t impose any state sales tax at all, but Alaska permits local sales taxes. Most states also impose a variety of local sales taxes including county, city, and transit taxes, as is the case in Illinois, which has no tax-free weekend this year.
Anyway, in Maryland, shirts, sweaters, and shoes are exempt from the state’s 6-percent sales tax, as are blouses, bathing suits, and bras, as long as each item is sold at less than $100. A complete list of items that are taxable and tax-exempt is available here.
There are only a few rules. First, you can have a total purchase price of more than $100, but as long as every item in the purchase is tax-exempt, the entire purchase is tax-exempt. For example, if you buy two pairs of shoes, each for $80, your purchase is tax-exempt even though the total was greater than $100.
However, if you buy a bra for $38 and a backpack for $48, the total purchase would not be tax-exempt because the backpack “contaminated” the sale (backpacks are taxable). What you would have to do here is buy the bra separately, which would give it to you tax-free, and then buy the backpack in a separate transaction. You’ll pay tax only on the backpack this way.
A complete set of questions and answers is available from the comptroller’s office, here (PDF).
