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Pay what you owe to Montana: Governor makes sensible demand of online travel businesses

When Gov. Brian Schweitzer http://governor.mt.gov/ hired me to run the Revenue Department, he told me to follow a simple rule: Don’t abide tax cheats. If someone owes taxes, make sure they pay them.

So a few days ago, we had to sue Travelocity, Priceline, Orbitz, Expedia and a few other billion-dollar online travel companies, for not paying their taxes. We suspect that they have cheated the state out of millions of dollars.

Montana taxes the sale of hotel rooms and other lodging at a 7 percent rate, and most of this revenue goes into Montana tourism promotion. Montana is a world-class travel destination. Advertisements in travel magazines, newspapers and on radio and TV around the world funded by this tax bring people to Montana. The program is vital to the state’s tourism industry and has been a booming success.

We believe Travelocity http://www.travelocity.com/ , Priceline http://www.priceline.com/ , Orbitz http://www.orbitz.com/ and Expedia http://www.expedia.com/ are collecting this tax from Montana visitors, keeping a part of it for themselves and shortchanging us. We don’t know for sure what they are doing, because they won’t show us their books. But if it’s any indication, a jury in Texas recently ruled that Travelocity owed $20 million in unpaid taxes. We think we will have the same success here.

by DAN BUCKS

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/article_bfdf5d70-f25a-11df-994d-001cc4c002e0.html

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