Airport Parking Taxes – Are you being charged too much?

Airport Parking Taxes at Off-Airport Locations

We were actually surprised by today’s lead story. Not because the parking taxes are being added at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and Midway Airport, but because they were not already in place. It is very common when you use travel services in and around an airport to pay extra taxes without even realizing. In many locations, hotels, rental car companies and parking lots located off airport are charging the regular sales tax, plus some sort of travel sales tax, plus an airport access fee. I have been to airports were when you add all this up you are paying 28% in taxes.

Lets put this into perspective:

A rental car that is $50 a day for 3 days costs you $150 before taxes and $192 after $42 in taxes are added.
A hotel room that is $100 a night for 2 nights costs you $200 before taxes and $256 after $56 in taxes are added.
So if you are going on a weekend vacation or a 3-day business trip, you are paying $98 in taxes. That does not include the Starbucks you got on the way out of the airport… you paid 28% in that too…

The political justification for charging these high taxes is they are not being charged to locals. In the example above that is the case. However, it si the locals that use the parking and the locals that use the in-airport amenities. This is why it probably took as long as it did for Chicago to pass the airport parking taxes ordinance.

That said the airport parking taxes can be used for great programs for improving transportation and other city services used by more people than the airport. However, what is too much? When you start paying more than 10% in airport parking taxes? How about 20%? How about 30%?

Use the comment section at the bottom of this post to let us know how you feel about airport parking taxes and what you are willing to pay.

Chicago to add Airport Parking Taxes to off-site parking companies at O’Hare Airport and Midway Airport

Air travelers and the loved ones who pick them up have been able to cut their costs by parking at off-site garages and riding shuttles to O’Hare and Midway Airport terminals, but those bargains are about to shrink.

On Thursday, the City Council’s Aviation Committee approved a long-stalled ordinance empowering the city to slap parking companies that have set up shop just outside both airports — in some cases outside the city to avoid paying [airport parking taxes] that Mayor Rahm Emanuel loves to raise — with a tax of on ten percent of their gross revenues. Read More>>