Maine retailers are backing a proposal to create a sales-tax holiday in October as a way to stimulate the economy and give shoppers a break.

Massachusetts has had a sales-tax holiday since 2004. Vermont lawmakers passed one for the first time last year. New Hampshire doesn't need one because it doesn't have a sales tax.

Such days are being pushed by retailers nationally as a way to increase consumer spending and boost economic activity during the recession. Maine retailers say a sales-tax holiday over Columbus Day weekend makes even more sense in this year of plummeting retail sales and store closings that are emptying out Maine's malls and shopping districts.

But critics say this is not the year to be cutting taxes, as the state grapples with huge cuts to education and human services because of declining revenue.

New York was the first state to pass a sales-tax holiday in 1996 to appease retailers who complained they were losing customers to surrounding states that didn't tax clothing. Since then, more than a dozen states have adopted the tax holidays, many of them around the back-to-school season.

Florida has a sales-tax holiday for hurricane supplies, while Vermont's two-day holiday last year included a week-long extension for energy-efficient appliances.

In Maine, the idea has failed to gain much political momentum in the past.

"It has been discussed in the past, and everyone laughed hysterically," said state Rep. Meredith Strang Burgess, R-Cumberland.

But this year, Strang Burgess said she senses the political climate has changed, and Mainers are more receptive to the idea of a sales-tax break.

"Maine's retail sector needs help," she said.

Retail accounts for 14 percent of all jobs in the state, or about 89,000 workers in November, down from 93,300 workers in November 2007.

Strang Burgess points out that 70 percent of the retail work force is female, and the jobs attract large numbers of retirees, parents and students looking for flexible schedules.

"With the downturn in the economy, many of those flexible jobs are drying up," she said.

Strang Burgess is modeling her proposal on the Massachusetts sales-tax holiday, with heavy input from the Maine Merchants Association.

The proposal, which is still in draft form and hasn't been assigned to a committee yet, would exempt purchases during a two-day period, up to $2,500, from Maine's 5 percent sales tax. The break would not apply to big-ticket items such as automobiles and boats, even if they sold for less than $2,500.

Curtis Picard, executive director of the Maine Merchants Association, estimates the sales-tax holiday would cost the state about $4 million, out of sales-tax receipts that totaled $983 million in fiscal 2008. The cost would be offset by increases in state income-tax revenues, due to the extra hours put in by retail workers, as well as increased rooms and meals taxes from the influx of shoppers from other states and Canada.

He said a sales-tax break over the Columbus Day weekend would draw leaf peepers into Maine's retail outlets. Given the Legislative calendar, he said, there wasn't time to schedule one earlier.

RESULTS HARD TO DETERMINE

Calculating how much the state stands to lose or gain is virtually impossible, revenue officials say. Ken Jones, an analyst at the Vermont Tax Department, which collected $222.5 million from its 6 percent sales tax in the last fiscal year, has attempted to quantify how much the state lost.

He said there is no way to determine the value of the sales that took place during the tax holiday because they are not recorded as such. Complicating the picture were last spring's stimulus checks sent to federal taxpayers, the recession and other factors. All he can say is that sales-tax receipts in July remained the same compared to the same month a year earlier.

"We really couldn't determine...