Friday and Saturday shoppers can take advantage of the second annual Iowa sales tax holiday.

Although last year’s holiday didn’t seem to greatly impact sales, Iowa stores and shoppers are still anticipating this event.

“It didn’t bring a big rush. We expected a bigger rush than we had,” said Wal-Mart assistant manager Dan Sprouls.

Administrator of the Compliance Division of the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance Carl Castelda said a bill passed by the 2000 General Assembly established a sales tax-free holiday for the first Friday and Saturday of August each year.

He said Iowa followed several other states who already enacted a sales tax holiday. The Iowa Retail Federation lobbied the General Assembly for the holiday.

All businesses open on these days are required to participate, Castelda said. The only cost to these businesses is programming their computers and registers to not charge sales tax.

He said articles of clothing and footwear that cost less than $100 are exempt from sales tax regardless of the number of items sold.

Some athletic clothing, accessories and clothing services, such as dry cleaning and rental, are not included in the exemption.

Sprouls said he wishes more items were included in the tax-free weekend, but he understands why everything is not included.

“I think with the government rebates it would’ve been great to have everything tax-free,” he said.

Sprouls said it is unfortunate that school supplies, such as backpacks, aren’t included because many shoppers who take advantage of the holiday are parents back-to-school shopping.

“It would be nice if more things were included,” Melanie Piepel, senior in psychology, said.

Piepel enjoys shopping, but said she thought the tax holiday was last weekend.

“I probably won’t go because I just went to the Mega Mall, but otherwise I would’ve,” she said.

Clothing at the Mega Mall, in Minnesota, is tax-free year `round, she said.

Last year, the state expected to lose $3 million worth of tax revenue, but only lost $1.6 million, Castelda said.

In a report summarizing last year’s holiday, the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance found that $31.1 million of clothing and footwear were sold during the weekend.

According to the report, a comparison of the July to September quarter sales of 1999 and 2000 at Iowa department, clothing and footwear stores indicated that the legislation’s impact was small.

It said this could be partially attributed to a slowdown in consumer spending during this time.

However, there were several noticeable differences observed during last year’s holiday.

According to the report, the event attracted many out-of-state customers in Davenport and Council Bluffs.

Sprouls also noticed an increase in the sales of a few items.

“We did sell a few more basic clothing items like socks and underwear,” he said.

Sprouls said he anticipates a busy weekend, but not the busiest of the year.

“We’re hoping that we get more people this year. We’ve ordered some extra stock, but it won’t be like the day after Thanksgiving,” he said.