Lodging tax update

In June, the City of Long Beach hosted a roundtable to discuss lodging tax issues. The roundtable included cities, counties, the hospitality and direct marketing industries, hoteliers, and state Senator Dean Takko. This group of stakeholders discussed arising issues related to compliance and data submitted in the annual lodging tax reports, the lodging tax advisory committee (LTAC) process, and use of lodging tax dollars.

The roundtable decided that this stakeholder group would continue to meet and work together to find ways to improve the process of reporting and data collection, look for alternatives to lodging tax dollars that may also help with tourism impacts in local communities, and investigate the LTAC process for best practices.

Also at this meeting, the hospitality, tourism, and hotelier stakeholders indicated they want a definition of tourist placed in statute that includes a requirement that funds be used for activities directed at visitors traveling from more than 50 miles away. Cities and counties have opposed this effort in the past and remain concerned because it would in effect restrict uses of lodging tax funds for some local events and activities.

Also this month, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) gave their annual lodging tax report to the Legislature. There were two outstanding issues raised:

1. There is a 97 percent compliance rate (with just a few very small entities not reporting this year); and
2. There is some ongoing confusion in the data collection process.

As the lodging tax stakeholders noted in their recent meeting, there could be some time and effort spent on getting more accurate and better data for this report in the future.