https://reason.com/2026/05/18/taxes-and-government-fees-make-up-25-percent-of-car-rental-fees/
Taxes
Taxes and Government Fees Make Up 25 Percent of Car Rental Fees
Travelers make easy targets for revenue-hungry officials.
J.D. Tuccille | 5.18.2026 7:00 AM
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Travelers make for easy marks, since they rarely vote in the places that soak them for revenue. The taxes and fees add up. Last year, Tennessee’s WSMV4 reported that at Nashville International Airport, car renters are hit by “multiple taxes and daily charges that can add hundreds of dollars to vacation expenses.”
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“In nearly every case we examined, airport fees exceeded the combined taxes charged on a rental contract,” add Hoffer and Macumber-Rosin. “The largest total airport fee is charged at Newark Liberty International, at 40.67 percent—over $101 on a $250 car rental.”
Those fees are usually justified as funding airport operations. But in 2014, The Wall Street Journal’s Heather Haddon reported that “a tax on travelers who rent cars at Newark Liberty International Airport is helping to fund an animal shelter, a park and a jobs program in New Jersey’s largest city.” She added that “rental car companies, tax groups and travelers associations say the taxes unfairly tap people who don’t live in a locality to pay for services that benefit others.”
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Wasn’t one of the rallying cries of the American revolution? Carried over from the English Civil War around 1760’s. The principle was “the government should not tax a populace unless that populace is represented in some manner in that government”.
Readers of my blog will remember the many many times I ranted about just this very issue when I had to pay “property taxes” in a different Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee county that the one I voted in. I have zero voice in that “levy”. And, since it was a “vacation destination” with only a few full-time year round VOTING residents, taxes were unfairly pushed on “absentee landlords and property owners” via “inflated assessed valuations” by the local real estate “appraisers”. Wonder where their loyalties were? Of course, ALL properties were assessed at the “same rate” to pretend “fairness”. And, of course, those that rented their properties paid “business rates” regardless of incorporation status. A few rentals were owned by “churches” who got even more of a break since those rentals were for the “poor”; “wink, wink, nod”. Argh!
Here too “the vultures” (local politicians and bureaucrats as well as <highly paid> “authority bureaucrats”) all feast on the “bleached bones” of those who can’t vote locally to protect themselves from being “fiscally raped”.
Argh!
A plague on all their houses!
This is a real tragedy and should be a violation under the “Equal Protection” clause. (Where is some bright young lawyer, like a Patrick Henry, looking to strike a blow against the Leviathan for freedom?)
I recently learned of another “fee” imposed on anyone renting a car who is over 70? Where is the AARP or such protecting seniors from “age discrimination”?
Argh!
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