Melissa Frederick, The Examiner
2008-05-23 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Retailers are hoping that Virginia residents in the market for a generator or a fire extinguisher will visit stores for a tax holiday geared toward preparing for hurricanes.

Virginia’s Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday will begin Sunday and last through Saturday just at the start of hurricane season.

The holiday was passed by the legislature in 2007.

It applies to both big-ticket items such as inverter cables and generators under $1,000, and smaller items under $60 such as batteries, food storage containers and first-aid kits.

A list of eligible items is available at www.vaemergency.com.

Though Virginia’s most recent hurricane was Isabel in 2003, the tax break was passed as part of the state’s various efforts to be more prepared for natural disasters, according to Laurie Aldrich, president of the Virginia Retail Merchants Association.

Virginians may be more driven to think about preparedness because of the recent tornadoes that hit the state, suggested Joel Davidson, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Taxation.

The only other state this year to have a similar holiday is Louisiana, which suffered the effects of Hurricane Katrina, said Davidson.

Florida had a tax holiday but it has expired.

Virginia also has tax holidays for back-to-school supplies and environmentally friendly appliances. The hurricane holiday expires in 2012.

According to Aldrich, it is not clear whether the holiday will be as effective as, for example, the back-to-school tax break, which triggered a sales spike of 75 percent last year.

“We don’t really have a good sense of this one,” Davidson said. “There hasn’t been a ton of promotion yet.”

Sales people at stores such as Best Buy plan to use the extra traffic from the holiday to educate customers about items they might not think of in the context of emergency preparedness, said Jon Felts, assistant store manager at the Bailey’s Crossroads location.

“Some of those things are scanners for documents such as passports, and using thumb drives to back up data,” Felts said.

melissa.frederick@dcexaminer.com