Hotel tax bill for New Orleans advances

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana: New Orleans has made a small step toward getting more tourism-related tax revenue.
A state legislative committee has advanced a measure that, if passed, would let the city collect a 1 per cent sales tax on hotel room rentals that it agreed to stop collecting in the 1960s.

Backers of the bill say that tax suspension was supposed to be temporary. It was done in 1966 to ease the burden of a then-new state-approved tax on hotels that funded Superdome construction.
A House panel moved the bill to the full House.

But Rep. Neil Abramson’s measure faces a tough future. Tourism leaders have resisted Mayor Latoya Cantrell’s proposals for the city to get more tourism tax dollars, saying it could hurt the vital industry. Negotiations on the subject are ongoing. AP