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Floridians get to enjoy 10 days of tax free shopping on school supplies starting Friday, and as Matt Galka tells us, the sales tax holiday is tied for the state’s longest ever.

Backpacks, clothes, and computers; they’ll all be avoiding the taxman’s fees starting Friday when Florida kicks off a much longer back to school sales tax holiday

“This year we advocated for a longer extension and they agreed with it, and now it’s 10 days,” said James Miller with the Florida Retail Federation.

Miller says that the recent three day sales tax holidays were good, but a longer tax free time period is better for businesses.

“It allows them to space out the traffic we’re going to see for this holiday, in years past, over three days, there was an influx of people for those three days, lots of traffic, some retailers maybe couldn’t necessarily handle the increased workload,” he said.

The state expects shoppers to save almost $70 million dollars thanks to the holiday.

The National Retail Federation says average families spend more than $600 dollars a year on back to school shopping.  The Department of Education says the sales tax holiday is a good way for low-income families to stock up on the same items.

“The reality is that they want to come to school looking well, too.  So that gives them the opportunity, and it gives the community to give back to schools with supplies,” said K-12 Chancellor Hershel Lyons.

If you can’t make it out to the store, all online purchases of eligible items will be tax free if they’re bought during the 10 day window.

The tax free holiday runs from August 7^th through August 16^th.  Clothing under $100 dollars, the first $750 dollars of computer, and school supplies $15 dollars and under will all be tax exempt.