Friday, March 24, 2017

What the Lodging Tax Isn't



1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Carole, for the clarification. When Nick Haddad and I first began working on the lodging tax it was specifically designed as an adjunct to the existing sales tax and so paid by the consumer, not the provider. And perhaps equally if not more importantly, we were very concerned with how imposition of a lodging tax might affect elasticity of demand (in other words, would the tax drive down demand for lodging?). We examined every economic and econometric study we could find and they all came to the same conclusion: there is no affect on demand due to a lodging tax. The City stands to gain somewhere in the neighborhood of $800k in revenue generated 100% from visitors to the city over the next 5 years. This will, hopefully, take some of the pressure off property owners and their tenants.