Speaking of rental car taxes, the worst offender these days has to be the Phoenix airport (PHX) , where fees and taxes easily top off above 50%. That's just incredible to me. The only good thing is that the car rental companies seem to lower their rates to compensate for this (some of the fees, like airport facility charges, may not actually be directly paid to the gov't). I just got a weekly rental on a full size car from Alamo for $115 (using an Entertainment Card ID and $20 off coupon), with the total cost of the rental topping off just south of $200. Before I snagged this rate, I actually thought of renting the car from a nearby off-airport location, like a branch in a hotel lobby. The tax rate is basically half the on-airport rate -- although the rental rates tend to be higher. Frankly, for some rentals, it might still make sense to do this. For instance, if you wanted to book one of those nationwide promotional rates advertised on the car rental companies' websites, you'd probably save money. For instance, before I found this deal on a full size car, I thought of renting a minivan. The local minivan rates at PHX are quite high, but you can probably snag a $199/week rate booking direct from the car rental websites. If you picked it up at a nearby hotel (taking the hotel's shuttle bus) instead of at the airport, you could save $50 a week in taxes. Incidentally, hotwire and priceline are (as is typical for cars) useless in PHX. Hotwire wanted almost $40/day for a full size car and while I never actually bid with priceline, I see from another board that successful bidders were paying significantly more than $20/day, plus all the nasty fees and such.