End the Austin Hotel Tax
Austin-American Statesman: City owed almost $700,000 in hotel taxes
Three hotels make up almost half of the nearly $700,000 in delinquent occupancy taxes owed to Austin, according to a city auditor's report.[...]
About half of the 37 delinquent accounts owed less than $5,000.
I'd really enjoy the day when someone openly and explicitly questions the faulty logic behind "taxes owed to the city of Austin." I'm not talking about what I do here. I want to see it in the news, frontpage and top story. A principled stand against the coerced snatching of private property.
The hotel occupancy tax generates about $27 million annually, which goes to cultural arts, tourism promotion, the convention center and some capital projects.Austin levies a 9 percent tax on the cost of a room in hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, and other businesses that provide short-term lodging.
Thus, ironically, making the city less attractive to visit and subtracting the available visitor cash to spend on businesses within the city. The cost of staying for two nights at a hotel that's priced at $65 a night is bumped from $130 to $141. That extra eleven bucks could have gone towards the purchase of a CD at Waterloo Records, two cover charges for a show at Beerland, gifts at Toy Joy, and so on.
This isn't a huge amount to individually bear. I'm certain most people just move right on past it without pausing. They don't have to deal with the administration of the tax: that falls to the business owner. That ambivalence is another reason to hate the system, as it becomes easier to justify the theft and increase it when most folks aren't complaining.
Though the city has collected about 99 percent of the money it is owed, the number of hotels that owe the city money has increased over the past three years.The auditor's report said lax enforcement contributed to the decline.
SEND IN THE POLICE!
The city has not filed a lawsuit to collect back taxes since 1997.
Ah, the lawsuit, the first thing unthinking people mentally conjure when they object to claims of government aggression. It's frustrating to regularly point out that this kind of lawsuit is merely the prelude to the forceful appropriation of lives and property.
"Not fully pursuing delinquent hotels contributes to a worsening trend of noncompliance, negatively impacts participating funds and creates a greater risk of uncollectible accounts in the future," City Auditor Stephen Morgan wrote in the report, released Tuesday.
Translation: If people sit up and fucking realize the only reason to pay the tax is to avoid getting skewered in the court and the media and they see the enforcement of the law is lax, they aren't going to obey with the Greater Good in mind. They'll see the incentives available and run with it.
The city plans to begin cracking down on delinquent hotels with new enforcement measures, including filing lawsuits to collect the taxes owed, now that a process has been created to refer the cases to the law department, according to the report."It sends a message that we're paying attention to this revenue stream," Morgan said.
Copyright 2001-2005 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. All rights reserved.
You are scum, Stephen Morgan, for dressing up the reality of what you and your cohorts are doing in the language of business.
Comments
Just because a tax isn't fair doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay it. Let's say that these hotels collected the taxes in their hotel bills. If they collected the tax, why should they hold it when it is due to the city? If the hotel tax isn't fair, that battle should be fought in a legislative body (is it City Council that decides it?)--not through civil disobedience. And what about every other hotel that has paid their taxes? Is it fair to them that there are other hotels getting away with not paying?
Posted by: omit | August 11, 2005 12:20 PM
Sir (or Ma'am), I think you've missed my point.
There is nothing fundamentally special about the hotel tax that earned it my attention this morning. I read a news account stating - quite forthrightly and without any argumentative support - hotels "owed" taxes to the city government. As it so often happens, while in the process of posting about that particular outrage, I moved on to other aspects of the article.
No tax is fair. No tax is justified. No tax is harmless. I want them all gone. This particular burden is one instance of a larger problem.
But you have an interesting question and bring up an issue I didn't really discuss. If the hotels don't pay the tax, what should be done with it? I think they ought, to a reasonable extent of their capability, return the 9% tax part of the bills (or whatever percentage it's been over time) paid by their customers to the very people who paid the bills. If this cannot be done for reasons of bad recordkeeping, the hotel owners have every right to keep the money and do with it as they wish. The city government has no right at all to it.
The hotels that paid their taxes (mostly to avoid the punitive hand of government, thereby mimicking the tactics of Mafia organization protection money) certainly should stop paying it as they see fit. It may be impossible to get that money back once it enters the general revenue stream, but I see no problem asking for the last few years' worth of taxes back as a starting point, to get *some* restitution.
The entire hotel tax structure should end ASAP and from top to bottom in order to eliminate both the immorality of the government theft and the distortions, unfairness, and other undesirable consequences taxing systems inevitably create.
The solution we are told to utilize is the political one, but I think it is wrong for two reasons. One, it sanctions the system in place and it reinforces the belief politicians have of their own power. Two, it is impractical to expect a political body to give up or even significantly reduce a serious source of its income, particularly when argued upon the grounds I'm using here. If they agree with me, then in order to avoid appearing as titanic hypocrites, they also must abolish just about every other tax they impose on us.
Suing is a lost cause almost from the moment you file the paperwork. If one mounted the best possible legal attack and presented it to the most sympathetic judge, I very much doubt a ruling in your favor would survive the appellate courts...and you know for certain that the City of Austin would press it's case as far as it could go in order to secure this "revenue stream." Even (and we're getting ridiculous here) if the case got to the Supreme Court and it choose to hear it, you'd be a fool to even hope five or more justices would vote in your favor. Taxation is simply one of those aspects of government that the government will not give up. As a tool it is far too useful.
Civil disobedience is one method of accomplishing political change. I don't think it'll work until the number of people who think as I do massively increases. Please note that I didn't advocate one method to get rid of the hotel tax in this post.
I just want it gone.
Posted by: Drizz | August 11, 2005 01:33 PM