PROVIDENCE – Hotel tax collections, as well as meal and beverage tax collections, rose year over year in November, according to the state Department of Revenue.
The state department recently released fiscal 2015 local 1 percent tax collections reports, showing a 10.9 percent increase year over year for the hotel tax, and 11.6 percent increase year over year for the meal and beverage tax.
The local 1 percent hotel tax is collected on the rental of rooms in the state and is remitted in full to the municipality in which the room rental happened. The local 1 percent meal and beverage tax is collected on the sale of a meal and/or beverage that is prepared away from home. Like the 1 percent hotel tax, it is remitted in full to the municipality in which the meal or beverage was consumed.
In November, $231,231 was collected in the hotel tax, an increase of 10.9 percent compared with November 2013, when $208,572 was collected. On a fiscal-year-to-date basis, the increase changes to 8.1 percent, for a total of $2 million. Month over month, collections dropped nearly 37 percent in November.
Director of Revenue Rosemary Booth Gallogly noted the fiscal year tax collection growth was “an increase not only from last year at this time, but also an increase from the October 2014 report, hopefully a good sign.”
Meal and beverage tax collections rose 11.6 percent in November to $1.8 million, compared with $1.6 million in November 2013. Fiscal-year-to-date, meal and beverage tax collections increased 7.8 percent to $10.7 million, compared with $10 million during the same period in 2013.
When comparing month to month, collections dropped 9.2 percent to $1.8 million in November, compared with $2 million in October.
The entire report can be found on the Department of Revenue’s website, www.dor.ri.gov.