Most North Georgia families headed back to school will grab a shopping cart at least once, filling it with everything from clothes and shoes, book covers, notebooks and packages of pens, and maybe even a new tablet. The receipt shows a total with tax, but how much are we really spending and what are we spending it on?
The average family, nationally, will spend roughly $685 on back to school shopping, according to James Miller Senior Director of External Affairs with the Georgia Retail Association. He said that was down from last year's average of $687, but totaled up about $27.5 billion nationally.
An obvious top spending category is clothing. Miller said every year kids get bigger and that helps fuel this spending category, with families spending the most in this category -almost $237 nationally, on average.
It's probably no surprise that technology takes a top spot too. "You see more and more classrooms in more and more schools utilizing technologies in different capacities. You're seeing laptops and iPads and tablets flying off the shelves," Miller said. He added families will spend about $$$$ on average this year.
Even so, students still often need basic school supplies like paper, pencils, folders and the like. Miller said that was another top spending category, though there is a shift towards technology so people are buying a little less. "Some of the old stuff that we used back in the day - papers, pencils, those things - you're going to slowly see those sales dwindle, I think, in the next five to 10 years as technology becomes more prevalent and people are using those instead of writing stuff down."
Miller said not having a sales tax holiday - which has to be included in the budget by the Georgia Legislature - does impact Georgia sales.
"Three of the states surrounding Georgia do have sales tax holidays," said Miller. "So those residents along the [Georgia] border can hop over, drive a couple miles and save money in those states that are offering those discounts. Especially the states that are offering discounts on technology. If you're talking a 40 to 50 dollar savings on a laptop or iPad. So that's going to be significant and unfortunately it's going to hurt Georgia's bottom line."
Georgia's neighboring states Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee all go tax-free, Miller said. He added that often consumers will spend extra because they're saving on sales tax.
"This would have been a great time to have a sales tax holiday, with people having more money to spend, people feeling better about their own economic situation, confidence remains high, so you would have had sales above that $685 number if we would have had a sales tax holiday... unfortunately the state and local businesses in particular are going to suffer."
As for the actually back to school dates moving forward, Miller said earlier start dates don't impact the shopping season as much, however it does impact those sales-tax holidays and when they occur.
Tuesday
April 23rd, 2024
6:28AM
