Massachusetts clothing retailers got an unwelcome present this Father’s Day weekend: the Merrimack Premium Outlets.

The 100-store outlet mall off Exit 10 on the Everett Turnpike is just a short drive from the Massachusetts border, and it is on the route many Bay Staters take to the White Mountains or the Lakes Region or, just as importantly, to Manchester or Concord on business. It is so close to the state line that it will be a destination in itself, and not just a stop on the way to adventures farther north. That will be true even though Massachusetts exempts most clothing from its 6.25 percent sales tax.

In the Massachusetts tax code is a section called “apparel and fabric goods.” Most items that cost less than $175 are exempt from the sales tax. But not all. The busybody Bay State legislators could not stick to their arbitrary $175 cutoff. The temptation to tax was just too great. So they separated items into taxable and nontaxable categories, making a Saturday at the mall all the more complicated for shoppers and retailers.

Consider the footwear category. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue helpfully informs shoppers that the following items are tax-exempt: “Boat shoes; innersoles; jogging shoes; overshoes; sandals; shoelaces; shoes and boots; slippers; sneakers and tennis shoes.”

The list of taxable footwear-related items, however, is slightly longer: “Bowling shoes; cleated athletic shoes; football shoes; golf shoes; riding boots; shoe bags, trees; shoe polish, brushes; ski boots; waders.”

If you pop into a shoe store in Massachusetts and pick up a pair of basketball shoes for one child and baseball cleats for the other, you pay no tax on the basketball shoes but 6.25 percent on the cleats. If you buy laces and polish for your fading dress shoes, the laces are tax-free; the polish will cost you an extra 6.25 percent.

Marching band uniforms are tax-exempt. Athletic uniforms are not. Ski pants and swimsuits are tax-exempt, but “bathing and shower caps” are not. Neckties, gloves and Halloween costumes are tax-exempt, but handkerchiefs, hair barrettes and “special clothing for jockeys” are not.

If you live in Massachusetts, rather than keep all of that straight every time you need to fill some holes in your wardrobe, you could just shop in New Hampshire, where all of those items are tax-free. That’s why you often see Massachusetts plates at the outlets in Tilton and North Conway, even though most clothing is tax-exempt in Massachusetts.

One of the appeals of outlet malls is that they make shopping simple by having low prices all the time. You don’t have to wait for a sale. Similarly, New Hampshire makes clothes shopping simple by keeping everything tax-free. You don’t have to think about what item legislators decided was worthy of exempting and what they decided to tax — or why.

New Hampshire is kind of like the outlet mall of New England, which is not a bad thing to be. Score another win for the New Hampshire Advantage.