Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
You sometimes discover later that these taxes are in fact optional for the visitor.
Personally I very much mind when the hotel adds a charitable donation to the charity of their choice to my bill without asking. I choose the charities to which I contribute and I normally do say in a way that's tax deductible for me, so that I can contribute more and share the cost with my government.
I hate that too. Then they promote themselves as saying "Hotel X is great, we donated $100,000 to X Charity". No they didn't. The paying customers donated the money.