Ever notice just how much tax is added to your rental car or hotel bill?
Why all the taxes?
It's simple, visitors don't vote!
End of story.
There are local taxes, concession recovery taxes, tire disposal taxes, sur-charges,
etc. Most of them are the result of some local authority wanting to build
something nice for the local sports franchise (i.e. baseball/football stadium,
convention center) and not have to
pay for it. All parts of the country do it.
The total of most taxes is at least 20% and sometimes as much as 50% of
your bill for car rentals and almost as much for hotels. What can you do about it?
Not much unless we all
tell our representatives to "stop it." It's too easy a tax to
implement. A few years ago, New York City hotel taxes were so high that
many conventions looked elsewhere. New York lowered their taxes. It will take
that type of boycott to really do much about it.
It's really an indirect tax on the consumer. If you're traveling on
business, your employer pays the tax which is eventually passed on to the
customers (the only place it really can go). If they said it was passed along
to the shareholders, the value of the stock would go down. Businesses really
don't pay taxes. Any tax on a business is a hidden consumer tax.
