Policy

States Vary Widely in Taxes They Screw Out of Travelers

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Hate airline fees? Check your tab, because travelers are also being nickeled-and-dimed by additional taxes being imposed by states and cities.

Visitors to Fort Lauderdale and Honolulu, for example, typically spend about $22 a day on extra taxes on hotels, meals and rental cars. But that's far less than if they went to Chicago, where state and local hospitality taxes total more than $40 a day, according to a report from the Global Business Travel Association, a trade group.

Even staying in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is cheaper than Chicago's combined 16 percent tax on a hotel room and 20 percent tax on a car rental, the association's data show.

Travel is big business for states.  Florida visitors, for instance, spent nearly $67 billion in 2010, the latest information available, and generated nearly $10 billion to federal, state and local governments, according to new state-by-state figures from the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group.