This past weekend I stayed at a motel in New Jersey. When I got my bill at the end of my stay, in addition to the hotel charges were some New Jersey taxes.
First was the “Room Sales Tax”. O.K., I can understand that. The state of New Jersey needs money so it taxes hotel rooms.
The second item was “Room Occupancy Tax”. So I guess if I actually want to use the room I have to pay this second tax.
The third item was ( I am not making this up) was “Bed Tax” I suppose I could have asked for a room without a bed.
But this got me to thinking. New Jersey is missing out on many sources of additional revenue. There could be a “Window Tax”. Certainly I should be required to pay extra for being able to look out over the parking lot. And maybe a “Bathroom Tax”. Or a “Door Tax”. The possibilites are endless!
Yep, they’re particularly bad but wouldn’t be the first to try this kind of stupidity. Ironically, it probably winds up sucking as much out as it has going in, but that’s government for you. Always focused on what it can easily see rather than what it can’t.
“Bed taxes” are pretty popular in a lot of states, since they target tourists instead of the locals (they aren’t an acutal tax on “beds” obviously, they’re a tax on hotel rooms). I suspect the “bed tax” and occupancy tax are basically taxing the same thing, one levied by the state and the other by the local county/town/city.
But on the plus side, NJ has the cheapest gas of anywhere I’ve ever been, so you can make some of your money back if you fill up your tank.
I must admit that my in-person experience of Jersey is limited to Newark Airport and the bits you can see from New York. However, I don’t think I need your beaches.
Charge ‘em for the lice,
Extra for the mice,
Two percent for lookin’ in the mirror twice.
Here a little sluice,
There a little cut,
Three percent for sleepin’ with the window shut.
When it comes to fixin’ prices,
there are lots of tricks to know.
How it all increases,
All them bits and pieces,
Jesus, it’s amazing how it grows!
Brilliant considering that NJ has a huge tourist industry based on location, beaches and points of interest like Great Adventure and Atlantic City. You do realize NJ sits in the middle of the most populated region of the country and it is just a fairly short car ride from NYC & Philly?
Yeah, it is no Florida, but then we have about 40 million people that don’t need to fly to get here pretty easily.
Also in the end, the NJ hotel taxes were no worse than Massachusetts at least. The taxes were actually higher if I recall correctly. NYC is also higher. I can’t speak to Penn or Connecticut as I do not recall.
As you said, you don’t really know NJ. I know many parts of Florida and some are nice and some are like Tampa. So for every state, much variance.
Cape May, NJ might be one of the nicest places in the country to take a vacation just as an FYI. Kind of like Cape Cod but warmer water and not as expensive.
The center of NJ, especially around Princeton, is pretty nice. I lived there quite happily for a lot of years. Hotel taxes are not just for tourists, but for business travelers also. In the good old days more people worked for the Bell System in NJ than for the state.
Anyhow, just about every area has high hotel taxes. The people who stay in hotels don’t get to vote against the people levying the tax.
Yes, because the entirety of the Philadelphia and NYC metro areas are terrible hellholes, which is why nearly 30 million people live there.
And yes, of course, the entire state of New Jersey is nothing but toll highways and chemical processing plants and retarded asswipes in for the weekend from Long Island, and there’s absolutely nothing worthwhile in the entire state. No beautiful shore towns to visit, nowhere worth living, no beautiful, mostly untouched forests, and absolutely nothing of anyhistoricalimportance.
Christ, I don’t even live there anymore and have no desire to live there again on a permanent basis, but grow up. It’s no more a featureless hellhole than Florida or Montana or California or Michigan or anywhere else, and it gets fucking tiresome when idiotic pricks (who’ve probably never spent any time in the state beyond a brief trip to Newark airport or Atlantic City) think “Ha-ha New Jersey armpit of the nation what exit ha-ha” is the pinnacle of humor.
As for the OP: OMG! Natives take as much advantage of tourist dollars as they can, as they have since tourism was invented. Details at 11.
Well NYC is a nice place but be fair, millions live there as they have no other options. I live in Chicago, I’d leave in a minute, but there is no where else where I can get what I got here. I live in Chicago by need, not by choice. So there are milliions in cities like Chicago and NYC that would leave if they could.
That said, there are millions that would also move to to those cities, thus the net result is about even.
The taxes are broken down simply because this way the local or state governments can be sure a tax passed will not be arbitrarily applied to other businesses.
If a locale raises sales tax this is a burden on everyone. And it’s a pain to keep passing exemptions on various sales outles. So an occupancy tax is specific enough to pass and no one has to worry about it being applied to sale of fast food.
Bed taxes apply to not only hotels but often to hospital beds as well.
A use tax is basically just another term for a sales tax. The breaking down of them is simply a way to ease in the process of getting a tax increase approved
Various hotel taxes aren’t uncommon. I just stayed in Chicago for a business trip and had three or four different taxes applied. After all the victims of the tax don’t normally have the power vote on them.
Living in Philly, I certainly hear a lot about the grandeur of the Jersey Shore but have never experienced it myself. For the same money that I could have rented a house for a week in Jersey, I took my wife to Tokyo. And Germany and Italy and Madrid. (not all at once of course). She found that more exciting than spending a week eating fried hot dogs and salt water taffy.
