A correct headline would be: Wichita Falls mulls raising taxes on visitors, tourists.
Once again a bunch of local politicians and their cheerleaders are making the absurd case that locals do not pay hotel occupancy taxes (HOT) and thus should support raising those taxes. Certainly you do pay for those taxes in one way or another as local businesses and residents do put people up in hotels but there is something far more absurd about the entire issue.
If you were charged with increasing sales of steak for a supermarket chain, how far would your career go if your main plan was to build prettier meat cases and fund the work by raising the price of beef you sell from those cases?
The argument from civic cheerleaders is that tax money needs to be spent on things to attract tourists and business visitors because doing so helps the economy. But then, the solution to paying for things to attract more visitors seems to always be, no matter the city, to raise the cost of visiting the city by further taxing those visitors.
It is an only-in-government idea. If you were charged with increasing sales of steak for a supermarket chain, how far would your career go if your main plan was to build prettier meat cases and fund the work by raising the price of beef you sell from those cases?
Attracting visitors by raising the price they must pay to visit is classic government-think and symbolic of the economic illiteracy that permeates government bodies.
Absurd economic ideas of city governments
A correct headline would be: Wichita Falls mulls raising taxes on visitors, tourists.
Once again a bunch of local politicians and their cheerleaders are making the absurd case that locals do not pay hotel occupancy taxes (HOT) and thus should support raising those taxes. Certainly you do pay for those taxes in one way or another as local businesses and residents do put people up in hotels but there is something far more absurd about the entire issue.
If you were charged with increasing sales of steak for a supermarket chain, how far would your career go if your main plan was to build prettier meat cases and fund the work by raising the price of beef you sell from those cases?
The argument from civic cheerleaders is that tax money needs to be spent on things to attract tourists and business visitors because doing so helps the economy. But then, the solution to paying for things to attract more visitors seems to always be, no matter the city, to raise the cost of visiting the city by further taxing those visitors.
It is an only-in-government idea. If you were charged with increasing sales of steak for a supermarket chain, how far would your career go if your main plan was to build prettier meat cases and fund the work by raising the price of beef you sell from those cases?
Attracting visitors by raising the price they must pay to visit is classic government-think and symbolic of the economic illiteracy that permeates government bodies.