AUSTIN – Today, ahead of a travel-heavy Memorial Day Weekend, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a paper on hotel occupancy taxes in Texas and the increased costs they add to tourism.
“Texans and out-of-state visitors must pay exorbitant taxes for overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals,” said Carine Martinez-Gouhier, one of the paper’s authors and a research analyst in the Center for Economic Prosperity at TPPF. “As visitors seek to experience the beauty of the Lone Star State, they are required to financially ‘enhance and promote tourism and the convention and hotel industry’ through the hotel occupancy tax, but it really hurts local businesses instead. Without the tax, visitors could stay longer and spend more instead.”
The Texas hotel occupancy tax is levied at the state and local levels. Most accommodations are taxed at a rate between 6 and 17.5 percent. Texas’ largest cities have some of the highest rates in the nation.
“More information is needed to figure out the effect the tax has on Texas' economy,” Martinez-Gouhier. “Texas and its visitors would benefit from a repeal of the local hotel occupancy tax."
Read the full paper here.
For more information or to request an interview, please contact Alicia Pierce at[email protected] or 512-472-2700.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit free-market research institute based in Austin. The Texas Public Policy Foundation aims to advance a societal framework that effectively fosters human flourishing based upon cooperation and mutually beneficial exchange of ideas and speech.
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