Every August, Texas has a “tax free weekend.” School supplies and school clothes can be purchased for a few days without the addition of Texas’ 6 1/4 % sales tax – which, around Houston, is really 8 1/4% because of the additional penny for the City of Houston and the additional penny for METRO.

What about college textbooks? Have you priced them lately? Ours isn’t too bad (free, right?), but some of my students pay nearly $300 for some science and engineering books.

Representative Terry Canales

(D-Edinburg) wants to cut college students in on the action before each regular semester.

Go to the Texas Legislature’s website, 

https://capitol.texas.gov/Home.aspx (Links to an external site.)

and look up House Bill 21. Hint: Make sure you use the little pull-down menu to select the current legislative session (86R-2019 – that’s the 86th Regular session of the Texas Legislature) and type HB21 in the search window.

What do you think? Write a 2 – 5 page essay explaining this bill and the problem it’s trying to solve. Explain the advantages and disadvantages with this approach. What happened to the bill? If you were a legislator, how would you have voted on this bill?

Submit in Word. Cite your sources.

Resources

For anything to do with the Texas Legislature, start with the Texas Legislature’s website: 

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

Here’s Rep. Canales’ website: 

http://www.terrycanales.com/

CBS News writes that textbook costs are rising faster then inflation: 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-behind-the-soaring-cost-of-college-textbooks/

It probably doesn’t help that 80% of the textbook industry is controlled by five companies: 

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-college-textbooks-expensive-textbook-publishing-2018-12 

Here’s something from the Daily Texan – the student newspaper at UT Austin:

https://thedailytexan.com/2019/02/05/college-students-spend-about-500-a-year-on-textbooks-one-texas-lawmaker-wants-to-throw