Savings and school supplies make for busy day of tax-free shopping

Pens and pencils? Check.

Folders? Check.

Miniature three-ring binder with miniature hole-punched paper? ... Check.

“I don’t like going back to school, but I like going back-to-school shopping,” said 11-year-old Vica Pruett, who shopped Saturday with a friend, 13-year-old Abby Benson, and their mothers.

The countdown to back to school started with tax-free weekend shopping for many Columbia-area families Friday and Saturday, when a few dollars saved here and there on sales taxes could prove to add up quickly. South Carolina’s sales tax exemption on many items continues Sunday.

While Vica and Abby stocked up on school supplies at Staples on Garners Ferry Road – to be followed by a clothes-shopping trip to Target – their mothers described them as eager every year to get home to organize their spoils, like sorting through candy on Halloween.

Sue Benson, Abby’s mother, said she saves up money every year in anticipation of shopping on tax-free weekend and keeps an eye on stores’ prices to make sure they aren’t sneakily marked up.

Nine-year-old Dexter Wilkinson wasn’t the only member of his family loading up on school supplies at Target on Garners Ferry. His parents, Zak and Kathleen Proffitt, both are teachers.

“I like to stock up for the year, and I noticed that (tissues were) definitely something my students went through,” said Kathleen Proffitt, a chorus teacher at E.L. Wright Middle School. “And I bought air fresheners because I teach middle-schoolers, and they stink.”

Chris Brown, shopping at Target with his girlfriend, Rachel Senn, and a gaggle of kids in tow, said his tax-free weekend spendings creep up a little each year as his children grow older. They make a ritual of shopping on tax-free weekend.

They saved a little over $7 in taxes on a shopping cart filled with about $200 worth of notebooks, paper, erasers, lunchboxes, water bottles and classroom cleaning supplies, some of which were not tax-exempt. They anticipated more savings on shoes and clothes shopping later in the day.

Brown and Senn said they looked forward to seeing their kids get back into the classrooms in a couple weeks.

“I’m tired of hearing, ‘I’m bored,’ so it’s nice to get them back in school,” Senn said.

Not all who shopped over the weekend were lured by the tax-free savings, but they welcomed the benefits anyway.

For Christian Gamble, shopping at Staples for supplies to assemble a work portfolio, it was “just another weekend.”

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Savings and school supplies make for busy day of tax-free shopping."