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by lpolovets
983 days ago
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> If I'm price-comparing hotels, and I see one that's $100/night, and another that's $75/night, I know that the cost may be higher due to taxes, but it will be higher by the exact same percentage for both of the hotels. 1) IMHO this doesn't help. If I don't know what the taxes are, then knowing that they will be similarly high on either transaction doesn't help me with budgeting. Just like it's hard to know if a $75/night hotel is within my budget without knowing the size of its resort fee, it's also hard to know if it's within my budget without knowing if the tax on it is 8% or 18%. 2) FWIW this varies by county, so it's easy to have two hotels that are a mile apart but with different tax rates. To pick a random state, here is an old table of hotel taxes in Florida by county: https://www.floridasalestax.com/florida-tax-law-blog/2015/ja.... These taxes vary from 7% to 13%, so if you're picking hotels next to a county border, the difference can be noticeable. |
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Company A: $100
Company B: $140
Company C: $150
Company D: $155
Currently, when you go to buy from any of these companies they all add the hypothetical 10% taxes you would be required to pay, but company A also adds $60 in "service fees", Company B adds $20, Company C adds $10, and company D becomes the cheapest.
If you remove the bullshit fees the advertised prices are falsely excluding then the advertised prices give you the actual real relative position.
Hence there is value in this law, even if it doesn't force the taxes to be included.
Now your example of hotels is a worthwhile extension to this, where you could say "if the location of the purchase or service is fixed, the listed price must include all applicable taxes", but there's a clear benefit to banning the BS "fees".
This is ignoring the whole tax avoidance/evasion I believe these "fees" are also being used for.