Mayor Thomas Menino meets with officials from the hotel and restaurant industries to discuss a proposal to raise hotel and meal taxes under the new local option tax. The local option tax allows communities to increase their local tax on hotels and restaurant meals. Menino claims that the tax increase will address the necessity to diversify state revenue sources, and he expects other cities in Massachusetts to raise their local taxes as well. Under the proposal, hotel taxes would be raised another 2 percentage points to 14.45 %, while meal taxes would increase .75 percentage points to 7% in city and state taxes. The plan, which if passed would go into effect on October 1st, is to be presented to city council sometime next week. While it is expected to have the support of the city council, reactions from officials in the hotel and restaurant industries are mixed. Although industry officials have been expecting the proposal, they are deeply worried about the success of their businesses, which are already struggling in this economy. If passed, these local taxes would be on top of state levies scheduled to increase next month.
http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20090722thomas_menino_backs_new_boston_tax/
