GST-Free Weekends Announced for School Supplies Only

Back-to-school shopping just got a little lighter on the wallet, at least for a couple of weekends. Cabinet has declared July thirty-first to August second, and August fifteenth to seventeenth, as GST-free weekends. But before you rush to the checkout, here’s the catch, it only applies to school supplies. That detail didn’t make it into the initial Cabinet release, but Director General of the Belize Tax Service Department, Michelle Longsworth, is clearing things up. She says no one’s being misled, and her team is already working with stores across the country to make sure shoppers know exactly what qualifies.

 

Michelle Longsworth, Director General, Belize Tax Service Department

“When you look at the information that exists, you have school supplies that are already zero rated and already exempt. So, we have listed those and only added a few additions like uniform material, readymade uniform or stationary supplies. So, we are presently working on that to do the projection.”

 

Paul Lopez

“Just to be clear this is not only for school supplies or is it solely for school supplies?”

 

Michelle Longsworth

“Solely for school supplies. Those are some of the queries we have been getting since morning, because people feel like they can go to the store as they did in December. But, that is not correct. It is only for school supplies. It is for helping the Belizean public who have to incur these expenses to send their children back to school come this school year. So, it is only for school supplies. The announcement and notices we are putting out will list the school supplies that are GST free. So, I urge the general public and the businesses to refer to that list we are putting out to ensure that those are the only items that GST is removed from.”

 

Paul Lopez

“So essentially if my corner store sells school supplies, it applies to that store even if they don’t specialize in school supplies.”

 

Michelle Longsworth

“Correct, in many cases, and I can use the Asians, if you go into one of the Asian stores you will see they have a section that sells Pencils, markers, calculators, some of them even sell like bristol board and stuff like that, those will also be part of it. So, you can go into your regular corner store and they must remove GST from the items listed.”