The post Extra credit: This lawmaker’s persistence gave Florida’s back-to-school tax holiday an earlier start appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..
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Florida’s back-to-school tax holiday looks a little different this year, thanks to Wellington Republican Rep. Anne Gerwig.
Lawmakers moved up its start by 10 days at her request, a change that began Monday, enabling families to begin buying school supplies well before the state’s 67 counties send kids back to class in the second week of August.
That time frame shift, she said, is a welcome relief for less well-to-do households and parents hoping to eschew last-minute dashes to the store before school begins while still having enough time to make course-specific purchases after.
“We did a good thing by making the tax holiday permanent. But we got it a little bit wrong,” she told Florida Politics. “My mom friends were saying, ‘Hey, this is great, but I don’t want to wait ’til Aug. 1 to buy school supplies. They’re all wiped out by then.”
The school sales-tax holiday began in 1998 as a seven-day exemption for clothing and footwear costing $50 or less, created under the Florida Family Tax Relief Act to ease the financial strain of outfitting kids for the classroom. Backpacks were added the following year, followed by school supplies in 2001 and personal computers and related accessories in 2013.
But until recently, the holiday wasn’t guaranteed. Lawmakers had to reauthorize it through annual tax packages, with its length, spending caps and covered items shifting from year to year. Some years, like 2008 and 2009, it didn’t happen at all.
But it remained popular; the Legislature had enacted the holiday 22 times by 2025, when lawmakers finally agreed to make the holiday an annual event rather than a temporary exemption they perpetually had to renew each Session.
This year, at Gerwig’s urging, the Legislature set the holiday for Monday, July 20, through Thursday, Aug. 20 — a stretch that, unlike in years past, no longer falls entirely within August.
During that window, shoppers skip both the state’s 6% sales tax and any county discretionary surtaxes on clothing, footwear, wallets and qualifying bags costing $100 or less; school supplies costing $50 or less, including notebooks, binders, pens and scissors; learning aids and jigsaw puzzles costing $30 or less; and personal computers and accessories costing $1,500 or less, when bought for noncommercial home use.
Gerwig, whose youngest child is now about a decade removed from high school, said the idea for adjusting the timing came from other mothers she keeps up with on Facebook, who told her last year that cramming the holiday solely into August left them scrambling.
“The moms were saying, ‘I could really use another pay period to help me get my school supplies together before school starts,’” she said.
“But they also didn’t want the holiday to end when they still have to get the right calculator for their kids’ class. As a mom, I never bought the calculator ’til the kids sat in the classroom and the teacher said, ‘This is the one I want you to have.’ I wanted to make sure there was still that period of time that you could save on the calculator purchase and things that are more specific.”
Gerwig brought the proposal during the 2026 Regular Session to Jacksonville Republican Rep. Wyman Duggan, Speaker Pro Tempore and Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. He told her he had heard similar complaints from his constituents and was open to adjusting the time frame.
But amid cross-rotunda impasses that ultimately led to a budget Special Session in May, the idea was placed on the proverbial back burner, where it may have remained if Gerwig had let the issue go.
She didn’t.
During the Special Session, she raised the issue again with Duggan, this time on the House floor, before following up with a note specifying the July 20-Aug. 20 window.
Duggan remembers her persistence.
“It’s a good example of how public policy starts out theoretically but then has to survive contact with reality,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m in charge of the tax package, which has a lot of policy in it that can be incorporated as part of that legislation, and that was one that I elected to incorporate. It was a great idea, a great process improvement.”
Gerwig said the modest tweak, while not as eye-catching as overhauls like the Live Local Act and the to-be-decided proposal to slash property taxes, will nevertheless make a major difference for families increasingly forced to pinch pennies and stretch dollars.
“Everybody’s buzzword is affordability, so if I can make things easier for families without, you know, restructuring the entire budget, that’s a good thing,” she said, praising Duggan’s openness to the change.
“Affordability is the reason we do a lot of things, especially in South Florida, where it didn’t used to be so unaffordable, but now it’s kind of the apple in everyone’s eye, with West Palm Beach becoming such a mecca for financial centers and things like that. We’re not used to that. It’s always been very affordable to live in Palm Beach County, but the last few years have just gotten tough. So, we need to look for those ways we can make it better.”
The post Extra credit: This lawmaker’s persistence gave Florida’s back-to-school tax holiday an earlier start appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..
