Then there are towns that shake down the visitors in other ways….. A few years ago, I attended a conference in Kansas City and was stunned when I returned my rental car at the airport and the bill presented to me was about 1/3 higher than I expected. When I enquired what this rather vague line item of ‘municipal improvement fund’ was all about, it was explained to me that the City of KC didn’t want to put the cost of their new football (or perhaps baseball?) stadium on the backs of the taxpayers so they dumped it the visitors from out of town by putting this huge tax on rental cars (and other stuff I suppose). When I got home, I called the mayor up and told him that I will NEVER visit his town again and I will make sure that I tell as many people as I can about their approach to ‘municipal improvement projects’ and avoid KC like the plague.
I’m sure that there are other municipalities that do things as egregiously as KC but that one seemed way over the top to me.
I live in Florida. The whole state operates this way.
We have no state income tax because we tax the crap out of hotels, rental cars and other items consumed mostly by tourists.