Taxes and fees on a two-day compact car rental at SEA airport, over 45 percent taxes/fees of $75 USD

Jetronic said:
yes but the actual tax is 7.7%, the rest are added on by the rental company.
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The "Fees" go to some governing body not the rental car company. Concession recovery fee, customer facility charge, energy recovery fee, vehicle license fee are not going to the rental company.

Its the same with most hotels now you pay sales tax, a additional local hospitality tax %, a city occupancy "fee" which is a flat number, like $5, and sometimes an additional county occupancy fee. The Fee's go to the local government(s).

Call it what you want, its a tax. Easy to tax out of towners.
 
In 1999, I specifically recall being bummed the price of an entry level car rental at PHL went up to $14, from $12, for personal use. Then one day, it was $23 thanks to new taxes and surcharges. It's funny how as humans we can accept such things, not that there's much we can do. But imho we never see the benefits from these taxes and fees. Then people we know get 43% raises and people like us get fired to pay for them, and we scratch our heads because there's not much we can do lol
 
SC Maintenance said:
The "Fees" go to some governing body not the rental car company. Concession recovery fee, customer facility charge, energy recovery fee, vehicle license fee are not going to the rental company.

Its the same with most hotels now you pay sales tax, a additional local hospitality tax %, a city occupancy "fee" which is a flat number, like $5, and sometimes an additional county occupancy fee. The Fee's go to the local government(s).

Call it what you want, its a tax. Easy to tax out of towners.
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The out of towners or out of staters....look at E-ZPass and tolls. When a person has a tag from the tolling entity, they pay one price. Everyone else, a much higher one. I don't agree with that. New York is the worst, let me grab the price today it's been a while....

$3.18 with a NY E-ZPass. $8.25 for both no E-ZPass and non NY E-ZPass. Mid tier is for a license plate registered with NY E-ZPass and no transponder.

$3.18 vs. $8.25. That really gets the so-called out of towners....

Since a NY account is totally free? I have a NY account for when we pass through NY. Daily, I use a NJ account because I cross the river daily so I need it for the commuter discount. It costs $1/mo.

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Is this a Seattle thing, or an airport car rental thing?
I understand that renting a car at the airport is always a ripoff, and you should make your way to an offsite location to get a rental car.
 
gfh77665 said:
Use TURO for sure! https://turo.com/

Interesting this just came up, I am flying to Seattle, then Anchorage, then reverse next week. I'll spend a bit of time in Seattle.
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We used Turo for a rental in Anchorage last year. It was about 1/2 of getting a car at the airport.

We only needed a car for half of our trip, and Turo was a good option. It was newer than the car I was daily driving :)
 
zzyzzx said:
Is this a Seattle thing, or an airport car rental thing?
I understand that renting a car at the airport is always a ripoff, and you should make your way to an offsite location to get a rental car.
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In our small town of 100,000 the airport sometimes has the best rental deals during my comparison shopping. Gon's base rate is almost double of what I paid ($45/day) last fall for a compact. I just checked Expedia and it seems rental rates are way up across the board.
 
97prizm said:
Have you tried sixt? my sister and brother in law swear by them for rentals.
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Used them for the first time this past March in Puerto Rico. Off site of San Juan airport was the only negative. Everything else was as if it was Alamo, Enterprise, Thrifty, etc...
 
javacontour said:
We used Turo for a rental in Anchorage last year. It was about 1/2 of getting a car at the airport.

We only needed a car for half of our trip, and Turo was a good option. It was newer than the car I was daily driving :)
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I like and use Turo. But be careful. We only had one guy blame us for some scratches that we had nothing to do with.
 
GON said:
You are correct. I just don't recall the average taxes and fees being over 25 percent in the past. That is a lot of juice in taxes/ fees.

Posting as this might match for a boiling frog.

The "boiling frog" is a metaphorical term referring to a situation where a person or entity is unaware of a gradual, worsening problem until it is too late to escape or recover. The premise is that a frog placed in boiling water immediately jumps out, but a frog placed in warm water and gradually heated won't notice the danger until it's too late to escape.

The "boiling frog" concept is often used to highlight the dangers of slow, incremental changes that can lead to significant problems. It suggests that people can become complacent or unaware of their surroundings, failing to recognize that their well-being is deteriorating.
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Maybe so, maybe not. Especially at airports they’ve always been high with “recovery fees”, energy surcharges, stadium repayment fees, and other stupid things that nobody has say over.

I found long ago that if I needed to rent a car for some reason, do NOT rent at the airport, even though I have a major international one close by. That’s not always viable when traveling of course, but if starting a rental near home, it can have benefits.

This is modern highway robbery. You’re captive/trapped/stuck and they can take what they wish.
 
Jetronic said:
yes but the actual tax is 7.7%, the rest are added on by the rental company.
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No, all those fees are added on by the airport. It’s not the rental company that decides to tack on all the fees.

Further, the OP is limited in what rental companies he can choose - he can’t do Priceline, he has to go through the Defense Travel System (the bane of every Active Duty Traveler) to be compliant with DOD travel regulations, which are thousands of pages of Byzantine rules and requirements in the interest of “value to the taxpayer” and “proper accounting”.
 
supton said:
That's a small town???
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It's all relative. We have rural suburbia with farms and woods adjacent to town. I work with Phd's from huge cities like New York, Chicago, etc. who remind me how quaint our city is and there is nothing to do here (the arts, theatre, etc.). And our airport is quite small compared to Detroit and Grand Rapids. Having lived in the Upper Peninsula, I am ashamed that I have mentally adjusted to calling the local city "small". Sigh. Forgive me.
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I've managed to maintain a country boy attitude and not join the rat race.

I even fish at my workplace:
workplace fishing.webp
 
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If you want to travel-it cost what it costs. Otherwise everything else is an excuse to stay home.
 
javacontour said:
Yep, take photos before and after to document the state of the vehicle in advance.
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Yes! And closer up than you might think. Look the car over really well. This guy’s “spot” forward side of passenger side rear view mirror pod. Magical scratches apparently appeared. Lucky cash charm
 
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I rented a vehicle for the first time last year when I went to Minnesota. We did rent an expedition but that ish cost me $600 for 4 days. I did put like 500 miles on it though.
 
You vastly understated the true tax costs of your rental. I'm sure it is significantly more than 50% of the total cost when one considers ALL of the taxes already paid during every step of the manufacture process of the car and rental facility plus the tax cost passed to the consumer for the various peoples wages/SS/income taxes who constructed all that and the people working for the rental company etc.
 
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