If you want to shop without paying sales tax, your options fall into three buckets: the five states with no statewide sales tax, the permanent exemptions that apply in states that do tax sales, and the roughly 20 states that run short sales tax holidays each year. The states with tax-free shopping and sales tax holidays cover most of the country in one form or another, but the fine print — local taxes, price caps, and use tax obligations that follow you home — decides whether you actually save anything.
The Five States With No Statewide Sales Tax
Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon don’t impose a general sales tax at the state level. The price on the tag is the price at the register. These five are sometimes called the NOMAD states.
Delaware and Oregon are the cleanest of the group. Delaware imposes no local sales taxes of any kind.1Division of Revenue – State of Delaware. Step 4: Learn About Gross Receipts Taxes Oregon doesn’t authorize local general sales taxes or the specialty consumption taxes the other tax-free states rely on. In both, shopping is genuinely untaxed across the board.
The other three deserve an asterisk. Alaska has no state sales tax, but state law authorizes boroughs and cities to levy their own.2Justia. Alaska Code 29.45.650 – Sales and Use Tax Local rates reach nearly 8% in some jurisdictions. Anchorage charges no local sales tax; Juneau and Kodiak do. One Alaska town is genuinely tax-free and the next one over rivals a full sales tax state.
New Hampshire doesn’t tax retail goods, but it charges 8.5% on restaurant meals, hotel stays, and motor vehicle rentals.3NH Department of Revenue Administration. Meals and Rooms (Rentals) Tax Dinner out and a weekend hotel come with a bill.
Montana allows designated tourist communities to charge a resort tax of up to 3% on purchases at restaurants, bars, hotels, and recreational businesses.4Montana Department of Transportation. Financing Districts – Resort and Local Option Taxes Whitefish, Big Sky, and West Yellowstone — the destinations most visitors are actually heading to — all charge it. A jacket at a Montana clothing store is untaxed. Lunch in Big Sky isn’t.
Items Exempt Year-Round in States That Do Tax Sales
Even in the 45 states that charge sales tax, whole categories of goods are permanently exempt. These aren’t promotions. They’re written into the tax code.
Groceries and Medicine
Most states exempt unprepared food from sales tax entirely. A handful tax groceries at a reduced rate, typically 1% to 4%, and only a few apply the full state rate. The definition matters: unprepared food you take home to cook qualifies; prepared meals, candy, and soft drinks usually don’t.
Prescription medications are exempt in nearly every state, and most states also exempt durable medical equipment like wheelchairs, hearing aids, and prosthetics. Over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements are a different story. They’re taxable in most states, even sitting on the same pharmacy shelf as exempt prescriptions.
Clothing
Clothing exemptions are rarer. Four states — Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont — exempt all clothing with no price limit.5Vermont Department of Taxes. What Is Taxable and Exempt A $15 t-shirt and a $500 coat are both untaxed year-round.
Several states exempt clothing below a per-item cap. New York exempts clothing and footwear priced under $110 per item.6Department of Taxation and Finance. Clothing and Footwear Exemption Massachusetts caps its exemption at $175, Rhode Island at $250, and Connecticut at $50. Anything above those thresholds gets taxed at the full state rate.
The definitions are narrow. Athletic equipment, costume accessories, and protective gear often don’t qualify as “clothing” even though you wear them. State revenue departments publish detailed guidance, and the line can be specific.
Sales Tax Holidays in 2026
About 20 states suspend sales tax on certain purchases for a few days each year. Most holidays run two to seven days and cluster in late July and August for back-to-school shopping. Several states also schedule holidays earlier in the year for severe weather preparedness or energy-efficient appliances.
Common qualifying categories and typical caps:
- Clothing and footwear, often capped at $100 per item, with higher limits in some states
- School supplies like notebooks, pens, and backpacks, usually capped at $30 to $50 per item
- Computers and tablets, with caps ranging from $1,000 to $1,500
- Emergency preparedness gear including generators, batteries, and weather supplies
- Energy Star appliances, sometimes up to $1,500 each
Price caps trip people up. A $1,200 laptop can be tax-free in one state and fully taxable in another where the computer cap is $1,000. Anything above the cap for its category stays taxable during the holiday.
States with confirmed 2026 back-to-school holidays include Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Dates cluster in late July through mid-August, with most holidays running over a weekend. Retailers don’t choose whether to participate. If the state declares the holiday, every store must stop collecting tax on qualifying items during the window.
Does Online Shopping Get You Around Sales Tax?
Not anymore. A decade ago, buying from an out-of-state website often meant skipping sales tax. That changed in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled in South Dakota v. Wayfair that states can require online sellers to collect sales tax even without a physical store or warehouse in the state.7Supreme Court of the United States. South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. The threshold in most states is $100,000 in annual sales delivered into the state.
Every state that charges sales tax now has an economic nexus law. If you order from a seller in tax-free Oregon and ship to Texas, the seller almost certainly collects Texas sales tax at checkout. What matters is your delivery address, not the seller’s location.
Marketplace facilitator laws take it further. Platforms like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Walmart are required to collect and remit sales tax on purchases made through them, including sales by small third-party sellers. If you’re buying from a marketplace, you’re paying tax. Shopping online from a tax-free state isn’t a workaround.
Use Tax: Why Crossing a Border Doesn’t Erase the Bill
If you drive to a tax-free state, load up on electronics or furniture, and bring everything home to a state with sales tax, you legally owe use tax on those purchases. Use tax exists to prevent people from dodging their home state’s sales tax by crossing a state line.
The idea is straightforward. When you acquire something without paying the sales tax your home state would normally charge, you owe use tax at the same rate, including any local add-ons. Every state with a sales tax also imposes a use tax.
Most states expect you to report use tax on your annual state income tax return. Some include a dedicated line; others provide a worksheet or a lookup table based on your adjusted gross income so you can estimate what you owe without tracking every receipt.
Enforcement is uneven on small purchases. States lack the resources to audit every resident’s shopping bags. But big-ticket items have real teeth. Buy a car, boat, or RV out of state and you’ll owe use tax when you register it at home. The registration office typically won’t process the paperwork until the tax is paid. Ignoring use tax on smaller purchases is technically tax evasion, and penalties for underpayment generally include interest plus a percentage-based fine. Most people never face consequences for a single trip, but the obligation is real, especially for businesses making large or frequent untaxed purchases.
Refunds for International Visitors
The United States has no nationwide VAT refund system like the one travelers encounter in Europe and parts of Asia. There is no federal mechanism for foreign visitors to reclaim sales tax on purchases.
Louisiana ran the most prominent state-level program for decades, allowing international visitors with a foreign passport to claim refunds on state and local sales taxes at designated refund centers. That program ended on July 1, 2024, after 36 years.8Louisiana Department of Revenue. Louisiana Tax Free Shopping Program for International Visitors to End July 1 No other state currently runs a comparable refund program.
For visitors from abroad, the reliable way to avoid U.S. sales tax is to shop in the five states without one — remembering Alaska’s local taxes, New Hampshire’s meals and lodging tax, and Montana’s resort tax in tourist towns.