{"id":10710,"date":"2019-02-20T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=10710"},"modified":"2019-02-19T00:38:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T06:38:10","slug":"a-very-pinpointed-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/02\/a-very-pinpointed-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"A very pinpointed tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"September 17, 2007:<\/strong> The then-Super 8 in Rock Valley has been the town’s only motel, but has since lost its franchise tag. Of the out-of-the-way places I’ve stayed in Iowa, this is one of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rock Valley is one of the few non-suburbs in Iowa showing population growth. It’s in the far northwest corner of the state that’s shown ticks upward in school enrollment<\/a>. It’s growing so much that it’s looking at a big-city revenue generator: a hotel-motel tax.<\/p>\n

KIWA Radio reports<\/a> that city voters will decide whether to impose the tax in March. What prompted this? Very likely the impending opening of the town’s second motel. A GrandStay Hotel & Suites is mentioned in the story, and a website says one is coming in spring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So this tax is targeted at two businesses \u2014 or rather, the patrons of two businesses \u2014 one of which isn’t part of a chain anymore (see photo).<\/p>\n

On the one hand, if a city is lucky enough to have a lodging sector, this is certainly one way to raise revenue. On the other hand, the only tactics that more openly milk out-of-towners while not affecting locals as much are toll roads that charge non-pass-holders more and the batch of taxes and surcharges awaiting anyone and anything connected to an airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 17, 2007: The then-Super 8 in Rock Valley has been the town’s only motel, but has since lost its franchise tag. Of the out-of-the-way places I’ve stayed in Iowa, this is one of them. Rock Valley is one of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10712,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions\/10712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}