Love-Hate Relationship with Tourism 

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Right here in Hawaii, we formally have a love-hate relationship with tourism.

How can we find it irresistible?  Look no additional than the Hawaii Tourism Authority.  The HTA was established by laws in 1998 (Act 156, Session Legal guidelines of Hawaii 1998).  The preamble to that laws recited that the customer business “accounts for nearly twenty-five  per cent of the gross state product and supplies over thirty per cent of all civilian jobs. In mild of the State’s dependence on tourism, this can be very essential that the event, advertising and marketing, and analysis of this business be coordinated in a way according to the wants of the State.”  In consequence, HTA has been awarding profitable advertising and marketing contracts – as Civil Beat reported, the advertising and marketing contract that the Hawaii Guests and Conference Bureau had been engaged on was price about $21.5 million a yr, and it awarded (however later took again) a advertising and marketing contract to the Council for Native Hawaiian Development price about $34 million in its first two years.

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How can we hate it?  We now have been taxing the bejeebers out of vacationers.  Final yr, for instance, our Legislature, overriding Governor Ige’s veto of Home Invoice 862 (2021), stopped sharing Transient Lodging Tax collections with the counties and as a substitute approved the counties to impose their very own TAT on prime of the ten.25% the State imposes.  The entire counties shortly jumped on that bandwagon and imposed county TAT at 3.0%, essentially the most allowed beneath the legislation.  Now, vacationers their lodge folios are greeted with a state TAT of 10.25%, a county TAT of three%, a state basic excise tax of 4%, and, for many counties, a county surcharge on state tax of 0.5%.  That’s a whopping mixed tax fee of near 18% beneath present legislation.

On the Legislature and our Govt Chambers, efforts to beat off the vacationers with a stick proceed.  A number of variations of the “Customer Inexperienced Charge,” which we now have complained about earlier than, are nonetheless alive inside the large sq. constructing.  The payments would cost vacationers $50 for a one-year license to go to our parks, seashores, and different pure points of interest.  The payments sponsored by the Governor’s Workplace, HB 1051 and SB 1349, are each useless for this session, however related payments resembling HB 1162 and SB 636 have handed the primary spherical of committee hearings and at the moment are awaiting consideration by the legislature’s highly effective cash committees.  HB 820 would have imposed an eye-popping 25% TAT fee (supposedly in lieu of the present 10.25%, though the invoice doesn’t actually say that) on transient trip leases.  After an hour of emotional testimony by scores of individuals on Friday, February 24, Home Finance killed the invoice.  To me, it appeared exceptional that the invoice even obtained all the way in which to a Finance listening to. 

With all of those blended messages going out to what’s, fortunately or unhappily, our No. 1 financial driver, the opportunity of financial waste looms massive.  What would you assume if State Company #1 dug up a pipeline on A Avenue and moved it to B Avenue, for beaucoup bucks, after which three months later State Company #2 dug up the identical pipeline on B Avenue and moved it again to A Avenue, once more for mucho moola?  A number of cash was spent, little or no was completed.  We could not all agree on the correct technique for our tourism business, however our management must resolve on ONE route and commit taxpayer assets to it.  We will’t go together with totally different companies or factions pushing in several instructions, or (heaven forbid) preventing one another, with taxpayer funds.

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