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Rene Garcia proposes tax holiday to help small businesses

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

State Sen. Rene Garcia has again filed legislation to create a “Small Business Saturday sales tax holiday.”

The bill (SB 1236) was filed Wednesday for the 2016 Legislative Session.

The Miami Republican filed a similar bill for last session but it and a House companion died in committees.

The idea has been supported by the National Federation of Independent Business, saying it would “encourage consumers to patronize their local independent businesses during the year’s busiest shopping weekend.”

The tax holiday would be next Nov. 26 — the day after Black Friday — and would apply to sales tax on items costing $1,000 or less.

It defines small businesses as those owing “less than $200,000 in total tax.”

The bill also would set aside $200,000 in nonrecurring general revenue funds to subsidize the tax holiday.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected]

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