What: Shoppers looking to save on back-to-school purchases can take advantage of upcoming tax holidays which provide windows of opportunity for avoiding state sales taxes on certain items – if you know where and when they're being offered. Currently, 16 states hold sales tax holidays where state sales tax charges are temporarily dropped on back-to-school items and other qualifying products - according to each state's tax holiday rules. Sales tax holidays timed for back-to-school shopping begin as early as July 25 and many take place in early August.

States Offering Back-to-school Sales Tax Holidays: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Visual: Additional details are provided in the accompanying Wolters Kluwer, CCH Smart Chart of 2014 State Tax Holidays. Smart Charts provide highly visual and easy to find information on hundreds of federal and state tax topics via the powerful IntelliConnect research platform.

Expert Analyst Available for Interviews: Carol Kokinis-Graves, JD is an attorney and senior state tax analyst for Wolters Kluwer, CCH (www.CCHGroup.com) specializing in tracking, analyzing and reporting issues regarding state and local sales and use taxes. She is also an expert in e-commerce transactions involving state taxes.

Ms. Kokinis-Graves can discuss specific sales tax holidays for each state, including:

• 2014 effective dates
• All qualifying items (school supplies, clothing, computers, software, etc.)
• States that have recently discontinued their sales tax holidays
• How much shoppers may save, depending on how much they spend