By Christopher Swope

Nobody enjoys paying sales taxes. And everyone loves a holiday. It’s no surprise, then, that “sales tax holidays,” in which sales taxes on certain products are temporarily suspended, are popular these days. Buy a computer in Pennsylvania from August 6 to 13, and it’ll be tax-free. If it’s back-to-school supplies you’re after, head to Texas or South Carolina and pay no sales tax from August 4 to 6. And in Denver, if one proposal goes through, you won’t pay sales taxes on anything the day after Thanksgiving.

Politicians and retailers are addicted to sales tax holidays, and it’s easy to see why. Elected officials come off looking like Santa Claus, while retailers inevitably see a spike in sales. But the increasing popularity of tax holidays comes at an awkward time, with debate raging over whether consumers should pay sales taxes when they buy products over the Internet. State and local officials have largely sided with Main Street retailers here, and are trying to make the case that there should be a “level playing field” between bricks-and-mortar sellers and e-tailers like Amazon.com.

The problem is that tax holidays make the already complicated process of collecting sales and use taxes even more complex. Already, there are some 7,600 separate jurisdictions in this country that levy sales taxes, and each one exempts its own set of products — such as food or clothing — from the tax. If state and local governments truly want a level playing field, they have got to simplify this terribly disjointed system. The Amazons of the world don’t legally have to collect sales and use taxes, and they’ll never volunteer to do it if it’s such a huge pain in the neck.

A simplification effort is underway to address this. Hundreds of revenue officials from 23 states are in the process of hammering out a streamlined and more uniform sales tax system. Their goal is ambitious and far-sighted: to keep the sales tax as a viable tool to fund schools, health care and prisons far into the future.

The plan, however, is only undermined by the short-term thinking behind sales tax holidays. First of all, holidays make the task of simplification that much more difficult by specifying that this or that product is tax-exempt only a few days out of the year. What’s more, the willingness of retailers and lawmakers to turn to tax holidays weakens their arguments about the internet. For all the retailers’ talk of a level playing field, it seems that in the end, they don’t mind if the field gets tilted now and then, so long as it benefits them. And for all the politicians’ cries of impending budgetary doom at the state and local level, the holiday frenzy shows that lawmakers are still content to view the sales tax as little more than a kitty for doling out political favors.

Christopher Swope is a staff writer for Governing.

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