"To tax (from the latin taxare: to estimate, which in turn is from tangere: to touch) is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer ..."

We are going to Seattle in the next few days and we need a car while there. The charge for the rental car will be $190.62 or slightly less than $50 per day. But wait there are some additional charges.

They include the following mandatory taxes, surcharges and fees. 1. Customer Facility Chg 5.00/day; 2. a Concession Recovery Fee at 11.10%, 3. a vehicle license recovery fee (in essence the car rental agency makes you pay for their license) of 31¢ per day, 4. a Rental Car Tax (9.70%), and finally 5. a Sales Tax (9.50%) = total of all these hidden charges are $83.06 or an addition to the quoted rate for the car of 44%.

The similar charges in California would include a slightly higher Airport Recovery Fee and sales tax that amounts to 9.75%. The fee in Bozeman, where I fished from last week was about 16%. The price in my home city of Sacramento is about $50-60 cheaper than any of the other cities above but with a 24% surcharge.

If you tax something, less of it will be produced. My inclination to visit Seattle again soon will be diminished by this kind of extortion. I wonder if the hotels and restaurants that we would have frequented will miss us. Certainly the hotels are burdened with a TOT (transit occupancy tax) and the restaurants have a sales tax. When we look at places to go on vacations we actually do look at this kind of exploitation of tourists. If the people in Seattle were smart, so would they.