This weekend’s sales tax holiday on clothes and school supplies will offer a much-needed lift to small businesses across the state, said Ron Aldridge, state director of NFIB, the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization.
The sales tax holiday is July 26-27. This is the first year Mississippi has waived the sales tax on school supplies.
“The sales tax holiday on clothing, combined with the usual back-to-school sales, already put people in the mood to shop, but expanding the holiday to include school supplies makes it even better,” Aldridge said. “On behalf of our small-business members, I want to thank Sen. Walter Michel for sponsoring the bill expanding the sales tax holiday, and I want to thank the Legislature for approving it and Governor Bryant for signing it into law.
This year’s sales tax holiday comes at a time when small-business optimism has declined. The widely-followed NFIB Small Business Optimism Index dipped 1.7 points last month to 103.3, according to the latest NFIB Small Business Economic Trends report. State-specific data is unavailable. Overall, although small business optimism remains near historic levels, sales expectations and profits declined in June as uncertainty increased to levels not seen in over two years.
“We’re encouraging people to do their back-to-school shopping at small, locally-owned businesses,” Aldridge said. “Small business is the engine that drives Mississippi’s economy, so when you help small business, you help everybody.”
