The local option for municipal hotel taxes in Saint Louis and Saint Charles counties have been eliminated! This is excellent news. Both counties already have countywide hotel taxes in place, and those systems work just fine. Cities with hotels in them will still collect normal sales taxes on room rentals, property taxes on the hotels, and business license fees. They don’t need special city hotel taxes on top of that. For more detail about why these local taxes are an unnecessary burden, check out the op-eds I wrote about local hotel taxes.
The few cities that already have such a tax will keep it, and there is an exception for Saint Peters. I don’t know why they get an exception, but that is probably a topic for another post. On the whole, this is a very good change that will reduce the constant quest by cities to look for new revenue sources every place they can.
Thanks to John Combest for the link to the original article.
