Wondering how you’ll pay for the mounting school supplies, band uniforms, and shoes your kids seem to need each year?

Thanks to North Carolina Democrats, shoppers will get a weekend pass on state and local sales taxes on clothing, computers, and other school supplies. The state’s sixth annual sales tax holiday starts at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, August 3 and ends at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, August 5.

Here’s where you’ll save:

• Clothes and footwear costing less than $100 each
• School supplies such as pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, textbooks, book bags, lunch bags, encyclopedias, dictionaries and calculators costing less than $100 each
• Sports and recreation equipment costing $50 or less per item
• Athletic and non-athletic uniforms costing $100 or less per item
• Cycling items such as shoes, shirts and gloves costing $100 or less
• Computers including the central processing unit, monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers totaling less than $3,500
• Computer supplies of $250 or less.

Here’s what’s not exempt:

• Clothing accessories, jewelry, and wallets
• Cosmetics
• Protective equipment
• Furniture
• Items used in a trade or business and rentals are not exempt from the sales tax.

The sales tax in North Carolina is 6.75 cents on the dollar in most of North Carolina. It’s 7.25 percent in Mecklenburg County.

The sales tax holiday was enacted by the state General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Easley in 2001.

For more information on the sales tax holiday or for an all-inclusive list of items that qualify as “school supplies” for the purposes of the sales tax holiday, go to the state Department of Revenue’s Web site at: http://www.dornc.com/taxes/sales/salestax_holiday.html.