U City Not Participating in School Sales Tax Holiday

Missouri's sales tax holiday is this weekend, but you'll have to shop outside of University City in order to reap the maximum benefit. is one of several local towns opting out of the back to school sales tax holiday. 

By Missouri state law, a sales tax holiday for school items begins on the first Friday in August and continues through the following Sunday. 

That means this coming weekend is the time to buy school clothing and supplies and not pay sales tax. It begins at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 3 and runs through Sunday.

The sales tax exemption is limited to:

• Clothing – any article having a taxable value of $100 or less
• School supplies – not to exceed $50 per purchase
• Computer software – taxable value of $350 or less
• Personal computers – not to exceed $3,500
• Computer peripheral devices – not to exceed $3,500

Cities are allowed to opt of cutting their own city tax, though. The Missouri Department of Revenue lists them all on its website. U City's opt out means that school items bought this weekend in town will be exempt from state taxes but not from city tax.

Qualifying Items

Section 144.049, RSMo, defines items exempt during the sales tax holiday as:

• Clothing — any article of wearing apparel, including footwear, intended to be worn on or about the human body. The term shall include but not be limited to cloth and other material used to make school uniforms or other school clothing. The term shall not include watches, watchbands, jewelry, handbags, handkerchiefs, umbrellas, scarves, ties, headbands or belt buckles. 
• School supplies — any item normally used by students in a standard classroom for educational purposes, including but not limited to, textbooks, notebooks, paper, writing instruments, crayons, art supplies, rulers, book bags, backpacks, handheld calculators, chalk, maps and globes. The term shall not include watches, radios, CD players, headphones, sporting equipment, portable or desktop telephones, copiers or other office equipment, furniture or fixtures. School supplies shall also include computer software having a taxable value of $350 or less.
• Personal computers — a laptop, desktop, or tower computer system which consists of a central processing unit, random access memory, a storage drive, a display monitor and a keyboard and devices designed for use in conjunction with a personal computer, such as a disk drive, memory module, compact disk drive, daughterboard, digitalizer, microphone, modem, motherboard, mouse, multimedia speaker, printer, scanner, single-user hardware, single-user operating system, soundcard, or video card.

Other cities in the St. Louis county area opting out include: Ballwin, Brentwood, Clayton, Des Peres, Ellisville, Fenton, Kirkwood, Ladue, Manchester, Maplewood, Richmond Heights, Shrewsbury, Town and Country, Twin Oaks, Warson Woods and Webster Groves.