Taxes on rental cars

[chpcruzr]

Do the same rules apply on the rental car taxes as do on hotel rooms (i.e. for back calculating the cost to Priceline of the rental car)?

[thesqueegeekid]

Interesting to find out but it would take much more effort as with my Seattle rental experience, they tack on all the local airport specific charges etc. I'll do some fiddling with the numbers when I get freed up from school work!!

[iahphx]

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.

[Scorp]

Priceline has made some changes to the way it reports taxes on car rentals. You now see the total tax and fee breakdown BEFORE you bid. It looks like this (example is Boston):

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Here is a breakdown of the maximum taxes, fees, and surcharges that apply to your rental car transaction:

Rental Convention Center ($10.00 per rental) $10.00

Title, Registration and Excise Taxes (3.55%) $2.13

MA Parking Tax ($0.30 per rental) $0.30

Sales Tax (5%) $3.00

Total Taxes, Fees and Surcharges $15.43

These taxes, fees and surcharges are charged to you as a reimbursement of actual taxes, fees and surcharges paid by priceline to the rental car company.

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[daawgon]

PDX/Portland Oregon renters might want to save a few bucks by viewing this post under Priceline http://www.betterbidding.com/index.php?act...T&f=184&t=1651&