Mayor White concocts creative new revenue stream

Even as the city is enjoying record revenues, Mayor White continues to concoct new revenue streams for the city. His latest scheme involves suing online travel websites:

Houston's mayor plans to file lawsuits against some of the nation's biggest travel Web sites including Travelocity and Expedia.

Mayor Bill White wants to collect millions of dollars in unpaid travel taxes.

Here's why: When you check into a hotel, you pay hotel occupancy taxes. And Houston banks on its hotel taxes to pay for amenities like Minute Maid Park

But travel Web sites basically rent big blocks of hotel rooms at what city officials call a bulk rate, then sell them to the public for a higher price.

Most of the Web sites pay hotel occupancy taxes only on the so-called bulk rate they pay for the rooms -- not the end price actually paid by the customer. So Houston's city government is hiring a law firm to take some of the big travel Web sites to court.

So, the mayor hopes to squeeze online travel sites that actually book rooms in Houston (not exactly a travel destination!) in bulk, and he proposes paying outside legal counsel instead of the city's own legal staff to do so?

Give Mayor White credit for creativity on this potential new revenue stream. It's good that he has solved all of the problems in the city, and has time to come up with these schemes.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/10/06 08:37 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (26)

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