Counties’ Ability to Collect TRT Themself Likely To Go Away

On Friday, Brent Gardner and a delegation of county officials from the eight counties who collect the transient room tax (TRT) themselves (rather than allowing the Tax Commission to do it for them) met with the sponsor of HB 82 as well as representatives from the Tax Commission. The reason for the meeting was to see if there wasn’t something that could be done to HB 82 that would allow those counties to continue to collect the TRT.

The goal of HB 82 is to simplify the process hotels have to go through to account for tax exempt government lodgers. An unfortunate result of the legislation is the prohibition of any government entity other than the Tax Commission collecting the transient room tax.

There are a couple of reasons why eight of Utah’s counties have opted to deal with the headache of collecting the tax themselves. First, the Tax Commission charges an administrative fee of 0.8 percent to collect the TRT (until recently that fee was 1.2 percent). And second, with nothing more than their administrative fee to show for their work, the Tax Commission has shown little interest in ensuring that hotels comply with the TRT. As counties have moved to collect their own TRT, they have reported increases in the tax upwards of 10 to 20 percent.

Unfortunately, UAC’s meeting with the sponsor of HB 82 on Friday was fruitless. The sponsor is unwilling to modify the bill and this morning the bill passed out of a Senate Committee. It now goes to the Senate floor where it appears to surely be adopted into law (it has yet to receive a single no vote).

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