Taking a cue from the success of various state sales tax "holidays," now retailers are trying to edge in on President-elect Obama's forthcoming stimulus package. See this Wall Street Journal story.
The National Retail Federation is calling for three 10-day stints of sales tax-free shopping, in March, July and October 2009.
Their proposal would have the federal government reimburse states for lost sales tax revenue during those times. Gee, wonder who will pay for that?
We don't need this sort of circuitous nonsense. What we need are industries that employ people. We need clean tech industries that wean us off foreign energy, thus freeing up our need to deploy troops in far flung areas. Thus reducing our defense expenditures. We need new thinking.
If we want to stimulate consumer spending, give a 50-100% tax credit toward purchases of green items like wind turbines, solar panels and more. This will decrease energy expenses, individually and for the nation as a whole. And it will free up checkbooks for other consumer goods.
Sales tax holidays are a dying idea anyway. Of the 17 states that have had such consumer holidays so far, some are considering doing away with them because of the coming state budget crises.
If retailers want to propose a holiday, how about pushing that all Americans get their birthday off as an official holiday. I might go spend some money on my birthday. And the sales tax would be spent as it should be, not in some end-around where we taxpayers foot the bill in the end anyway.
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