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- Actual Cape Cod Room Tax
Collections 2000 - 2009 - Surprising Trends
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- Chuck Carey
March 24, 2010
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What’s the first thing you ask your businesspeople friends ?
HOW’S BUSINESS ? and they usually answer with something cordial, or perhaps witty
or maybe even something candid. But the one thing they almost never answer with is
specific statistics.
In July of 1987 the State allowed the Towns to add a 4% tax on top of the existing
5.7% tax on Room Occupancy. This became the 9.7 % Hotel Motel Tax. The fact that
the 4% local option portion (roughly 40%) is sent to the towns means that the records
are kept by month by town giving us the ability to track the lodging industry like no
other. No other business taxes are kept locally and so no other category of business
can be monitored with hard facts quite so accurately. They won't give local sales or
meal tax figures on a regular, continuous basis.
We compiled years of monthly Room Tax figures obtained directly from the Dept. of
Revenue for each Town on the Cape. Here’s what the figures say:
Fact One: The Lodging Industry in the 15 Towns of Cape Cod is a $200 + M business annually. Since the year 2000, the 9.7 % produces $20 – 22 M on a surprisingly regular basis. That’s just Lodging mind you, not including sales or meals tax. Would you guess that the total industry, including meals, transport, and fun would be in the $400 to $500 Million per year range ?
Fact Two: The tax shows the lodging business was down 10% [about $1.9 M] in 2009 compared to 2008.
Fact Three: The figures have not really varied significantly from year to year
despite the fact that the national economy has changed dramatically during that period. Maybe it’s just as simple as the old folks said, “people will always go to the beach in the summer”.
Fact Four: Provincetown was the only town not down at all in 2009 and is usually the number two producer.
Fact Five: Yarmouth and Barnstable combined dropped about a million dollars -
almost half the total Capewide difference (which in dollars was $1.9 M) between '08 and '09. This squares with History because for years they have accounted for 40% of the gross Rooms Tax.
These hard facts show that Tourism on Cape Cod has been incredibly stable
through minor recessions (like the one after September 11, 2001), major economic
boom times (2007 and 2008) and actually held 91% of it's share in the worst global
recession. And, perhaps more importantly, it rained a 51 degree drizzle from May till July 10 except for a handful of
days.
The Actual Data From The DOR
