The Prince George’s County Council enacted a local law earlier this week to clarify the taxes remitted on hotel rooms booked through online travel companies. The Prince George’s County Council Report described the bill as follows:

An Act concerning the Hotel and Motel tax will clarify the taxable amount for calculation of the County’s hotel and motel tax due from a room re-marketer. As proposed the Bill will simply close a loophole in the current law that has been exploited by out of state online travel companies who unlike hotels in Prince George’s County are not remitting the full amount of hotel occupancy taxes collected from lodging consumers who book Prince George’s County hotel and motel rooms through online travel companies.

The Maryland Hotel and Lodging Association and the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center both supported this legislation.

A similar issue is being debated before the Maryland General Assembly this session. SB 190, would impose a State Sales and Use Tax on the full price paid to an online travel website for the cost of a hotel room, not the wholesale rate the travel website pays to a hotel. MACo offered amendments to include local hotel taxes in the scope of the bill, but was unsuccessful.

For more on MACo’s 2015 legislation, visit the Legislative Database.