If Not Timeshare Fee, Then What?

Horry County Council this week stared a $5 per night fee for timeshare condo visits in the face -- and blinked. Even though they need a fresh source of revenue to defray tourism infrastructure costs, council members, by a 9-2 margin, wimped out on enacting the fee for fear of triggering a timeshare industry lawsuit and sanctions by the state. State law bars local governments from imposing such fees.

Well, OK. Council members, we suppose, aren't elected to spit in the face of the increasingly powerful S.C. time-share industry, incurring humongous legal fees and risking a negative court judgment. Their reluctance to face down the state and the time-share lobby could be construed as careful stewardship of public resources.

The council majority's failure in courage, however, is potentially bad news for county property owners. They now face greater risk of paying costs that tourists should be paying -- upgrading arterial streets and highways, renourishing beaches, financing the extra police cars needed during high tourism season, tourism marketing and advertising, etc.

Because timeshare stays are an increasingly popular option for overnight and longer-term visitors, state and local accommodations tax revenues have flattened out and likely will decline. State law forbids the county and beach municipalities to charge the accommodations tax on timeshare stays. Never mind that the timeshare units visitors use often look just like hotel rooms in buildings that look just like hotels; the accommodations tax -- which supports tourism infrastructure, tourism marketing and certain tourism-related events -- applies only to overnight hotel stays.

If the county and beach municipalities can't capture comparable revenue from timeshare stays, then timeshare owners parasitically are feasting on public services that, strictly speaking, they don't pay to support.

Timeshare industry spokespeople argue, not wrongly, that they pay property taxes, on a per-unit basis, too. Those tax remittances, they say, are support enough for local government services devoted to tourism.

But upon closer scrutiny, this argument becomes clearly bogus. Hotel owners pay property taxes, too, but don't squawk too much about having to collect the accommodations tax. They know they benefit from it. If local governments didn't use accommodations tax revenue to keep up the beaches, provide public safety protection during tourism season, maintain the roads that lead to hotel driveways, provide tourists with events to attend and attract them to the Grand Strand to begin with, their businesses would wither and die.

Oh, well. Given County Council's lack of resolve try to break out of the straitjacket in which the state has placed it, there's no point in excoriating members for blinking in the face of time-share industry pressure. But council members -- as well as their counterparts in Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach and Surfside Beach -- might enlighten the rest of us on what other ideas they have for ensuring that tourists pay their fair share of the infrastructure that supports them. The money to support tourism has to come from somewhere -- other than local folks' taxes, which are high enough already. Get ready for the timeshare tax!