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by digitaltrees
3460 days ago
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All taxes have an effect on domestic parties, even if they apply to tourists, so those domestic parties will be the ones fighting against. I think national hotel chains are capable of advocating their interest, as is AirBnB. I don't think I have ever seen an example of someone imposing a tax "just because they can". Indeed, there are very real limits, at all levels of government, to the power to levy any tax. While this is a very complicated area of law with a lot of history of debate and change, the basic premise, is that taxes have to be tied to a reasonable social interest (general welfare), can not be arbitrary or capricious or designed to harm a specific party etc. If your state or local community doesn't limit taxing authority, then be part of the change you want and pursue a limit. |
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It's not hotels the tax hurts, so I don't think they would have advocated very hard. In fact, to the degree that tax pays for anything related (inspections, etc) they would support it as it would externalize their costs.
> I don't think I have ever seen an example of someone imposing a tax "just because they can".
Of course not, but because it reflects positively on them and yet doesn't impact the pocketbooks of their constituents. Which amounts to "because they can."
> If your state or local community doesn't limit taxing authority
Copyright is limited - to any finite duration. So yeah, there are limits. Our goal as a society shouldn't be to tax everything to the limit though, but to cover externalities to avoid burdening others.
In this case the people presumably using the resources (the tourists) are being taxed, but only indirectly on their hotel stay. This unfairly doubly-impacts a local who needs a room and it ignores the usage costs of those tourists who don't stay in a hotel, or rather saddles the hotel using tourist with the RV-tourist's share.
The fact that the tax badly fits the supposed problem is an indication that it's just a cash grab with any justification tacked on.
> then be part of the change you want and pursue a limit.
The "you're in a democracy so it's all your fault" answer. Fwiw, the first step of change is identifying and discussing the issue.
I'm not saying the answer isn't to change broken governments, but first you need to realize that the system exists to produce this state. We didn't end up here by accident and to fix it will require a reasonable alignment of incentives.