It's Only 5%

This weekend was the (what has become an annual) Massachusetts TAX FREE retail spending weekend...where thousands of consumers go out and buy big ticket items so they can save money by not having to pay taxes. So I went out, as I do every Sunday, to do my fun/errands shopping...where I ran into all the crazy people that have not stopped to punch figures into a calculator to realize they're just not saving THAT much. People are buying TVs, game consoles, furniture...things like that. So let's break it down.

Best Buy has a sign when you walk in the door that says items above $2500 are still charged tax. That's one of the rules statewide. You can't buy a house or a car on tax free weekend (here are some more rules), so we'll say you get the best deal possible at Best Buy...you find a TV for $2499.99. How much are you actually saving? Well, I'll tell you. You've only saved $124.00. OK, so that's a pretty good amount of money if you actually needed a TV in the first place, but a lot of people go out and buy these big ticket items BECAUSE it's tax free weekend. If you didn't need that TV and you therefore didn't buy it...you actually would have saved $2499.99...now there's money worth saving. But our state government knows us. They know we can't resist a savings. I picked up a few good deals myself...some comic books...a few DVDs...things like that. Maybe I saved $8.00 somewhere along the way, and that's great. But keep that in mind next year when the state has a tax free holiday. You may just save more by staying home.