Economists are expecting a 0.1 percent gain, and a 0.3 percent increase excluding autos and gas.
However, no economist is completely married to those forecasts because January sales will be impacted by a number of things, most importantly the unfavorable effect of the payroll tax increase.
As such, some strategists have declared the report the "moment of truth" or "the most important datapoint of the year."
But from the information we've gathered so far, it doesn't look like the tax hike had a major impact on sales.