For a city that has adopted “no taxation without representation” as its official motto, it is ironic that the D.C. City Council has no problem imposing a plethora of taxes on visitors to the District who have little say in local politics. The latest assault on non-residents and tourists comes in the form of a proposed 6% tax on ticket sales for museums and live performances.
The District of Columbia has a small population. Only about 10% of the roughly 6 million people in the Washington metropolitan area actually live in the District. Because of this, the D.C. government is always looking for ways to extort money from beyond its borders. Longtime residents of the region will remember such non-starters as toll booths on the Memorial Bridge and a commuter tax on federal employees.
With the arts tax, the City Council hopes to extract yet another tax on the constant stream of tourists who visit the district. It’s not enough that visitors to our nation’s capital already pay a 10% sales tax at restaurants, a 12% tax on parking, an astonishing 14.5% tax on hotel rooms, and then there is the 5-cent bag tax, just to add insult to injury.
Of course, these tourist taxes are on top of the federal taxes that are paid by every American to subsidize the worst public schools in the nation, lavish salaries for incompetent Metro employees, and a host of other benefits that make federal spending in D.C. the highest in the nation at $67,982 per person as of 2005. Virginia and Maryland each receive a fraction of that amount.
In these tough economic times, arts organizations are struggling to stay afloat and this tax would only add to their difficulties. As a result, numerous organizations such as the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Washington Shakespeare Company, the Arena Stage, and the Helen Hayes Awards foundation are sponsoring a petition drive to oppose the tax.
Tourists will come to D.C. no matter how absurd the taxes are. However, there is only so much the D.C. government can extort out of people before they start to spend less money. After getting soaked on hotel accommodations, meals, and taxi fares, tourists will likely decide they don’t have enough money to cover tickets to a show or to a private museum like the Phillips Collection or the Corcoran.
D.C. has always had ambitions to be respected as a world city, but if the City Council decides to declare war on tourists by instituting a new tax on the arts, all of us in the area will suffer as cultural institutions will be forced to offer fewer programs and performances, and in some cases, shut their doors forever.
