Sales tax holiday weekend across northeastern Oklahoma

Friday, August 6th 2004, 11:00 am

By: News On 6

The battle over back to school shoppers is on this weekend. The state of Texas is holding its sales tax free shopping weekend, and many stores in Oklahoma are trying to match the discounts to keep shoppers here.

The News on 6's Rick Wells visited Promenade Mall in Tulsa where the sale is already on. They call it "Better than Tax Free."

It's like the Red River Rivalry, Oklahoma against Texas, and a couple of months early. Texas has been at this for several years, and Oklahoma retailers realized they were losing customers on that weekend. So they've been offering additional discounts equal to the sales tax trying to keep folks in Oklahoma.

This is Promenade Mall's third year; more stores join in every time. We ran into Pam Lawmaster who'd just bought a bag full of jeans for a couple of teens. She said the saving was pretty good. "It rang up as 73, so it was really 48, whatever that is, I saved some money." Sounds like $25, and she was just getting started.

This is not the only place in the area. Claremore is offering discounts at some of its Ne-Mar Mall stores.

Muskogee has a city wide "Better than Tax Free" sale going and up in Bartlesville, the Washington Park Mall has a big sale and they're giving away $5,000 on Sunday.