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During this sales tax holiday weekend you can save on paper, pencils and clothes… but one item required for college students going back to school didn’t make the list. Textbooks are not exempt from sales tax this weekend. As Whitney Ray tells us, college students say lawmakers missed the mark when they put bowling shoes, gardening gloves and other items on the list and left textbooks off.

FAMU grad student Corbin Robinson is trying to avoid paying full price for textbooks.

“I’m hoping maybe there is a PDF version of the textbook online, there are so many other options I am hoping I can take before having to go to the bookstore and buy a book full price,” said Corbin.

If her search fails she’s have to fork over 250 dollars for her books and an extra 15 dollars in state sales tax. But last year Corbin could have saved the 15 dollars. That’s because the 2010 back-to-school-sales tax holiday included books.

This year you can save on clothes under 75 dollars and school supplies under 15. You can save on bowling shoes, lingerie, and diapers but you can’t save on textbooks. FSU Senior Rosa Mateu thinks that’s ridiculous.

“I would prefer them to take off the lingerie, the gardening gloves, the diapers, I’ll let that stand, but let’s take some stuff off and put textbooks back on there,” said Mateu.

Students spend an average of 450 dollars a semester on books. Even though, Corbin’s books will cost less, she still thinks state lawmakers missed the mark.

“Textbooks isn’t on that list, it’s kind of like… duh,” said Corbin.

Lawmakers left books off the exemption list this year, they say, because staggered start times and uncertainty among some students about which books are required made it unfair to offer the exemption for just one weekend before the start of class. Another reason lawmakers left textbooks off this year’s list of exempt items is because in years past the book exemption didn’t generate a lot of additional sales.