New break on college books

Students this weekend can skip taxes on books costing up to $300

DURHAM -- Attention, medical students: This weekend you can save $10.22 on that bend-with-your-knees heavy copy of "Vander's Human Physiology: The Mechanisms of Body Function."

Last year, students buying that textbook -- priced at $151.50 at UNC-Chapel Hill's health affairs bookstore -- wouldn't have been able to reap the benefits of the state's annual sales-tax holiday. The tax-free benefit was capped at $100 per book.

This year's limit is $300 for any textbooks bought today through Sunday, thanks to a tweak by state lawmakers.

Some students say a reprieve from the 6.75 percent tax is appreciated, but hardly enough.

"It's not as helpful as it first seems, given the overall cost of books and how early you need to order," said Jay Dawkins, student body president at N.C. State University. "Many students don't have a final book list yet for their classes or they aren't back. And it doesn't do anything for the round of books needed for second semester."

But bookstores on Triangle campuses are still hopeful that students will take advantage of the deal. And UNC system leaders, alarmed in recent years about textbook prices, are lauding the change.

Still, some students say the tax relief doesn't compare to savings they find on the Internet.

"I found it a heck of a lot cheaper through Amazon," said Matt Conrad, a recent UNC-CH graduate now doing research in a campus lab. "I usually got new books for less than the price of used books here."

The risk for Conrad comes if he drops the course. He can always resell a book he doesn't need, but he can't return it.

Campus bookstores have trumpeted the tax holiday this week, preaching its virtues in brochures and fliers. At UNC-CH, freshmen were told of the tax break during orientation. Students ordering textbooks online through campus bookstore Web sites won't have to pay taxes either.

The bookstore at Wake Technical Community College, which is usually closed on weekends, will be open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to capture some extra business, said Larry Long, the store's manager.

Long isn't sure how busy the store will be. Wake Tech's summer session just finished, and the campus is in a between-semesters lull, with fall classes starting Aug. 18. Still, Long is a fan of increasing the cap for the tax-free holiday.

"We always said before, when it was $100, that it wasn't high enough," he said.

College students have grumbled about textbook prices for years. In 2007, the UNC system required campuses to lower book costs for their students, who pay, on average, between $800 and $1,200 a year for their books. Public universities now either promise to buy back books or offer book-rental programs.

Peter Hans, a member of the UNC system Board of Governors who last year led a committee examining the textbook-pricing issue, said the tax change this year is a public acknowledgment of a problem that is still far from solved. The bigger challenge, he said, is to pressure the publishing industry to drive down prices.

"The legislature's action is welcome, but it is certainly a short-term step," he said.

College students have a battery of strategies to avoid buying textbooks. At N.C. Central University in Durham, junior Latoya Watkins saved $100 by borrowing an arts and humanities text from a friend for a summer course.

And senior Breylon Smith took a chance last semester and didn't buy any of the assigned books for an English literature course. He estimates he saved $60 to $80, and made it through the course using the Internet to locate poems and other literature he needed to read.

It was risky, he concedes.

"It's definitely not a solution," he said. "I got lucky."

Students also sell a lot of books to each other, avoiding the tax hit entirely. The practice reduces university profits, but annual sales have still continued to grow, said Richard Hayes, director of N.C. State University's bookstores. Sales last fall topped the previous year by almost 20 percent, he said.

(Staff writer Tim Simmons contributed to this report.)