Summit County might get something it and other Utah counties have long asked for: fewer restrictions on how to spend taxes paid by visitors to Airbnbs, hotels and the like.
Deputy Summit County Manager Janna Young said House Bill 456 allows counties making more than $1 million annually in short-term rental sales taxes to use it to mitigate tourism, not just promote it.
“The first 2% has to go to tourism promotion, and then the rest is flexible to be used on various things such as the construction, maintenance and operation of convention centers, exhibit halls, recreation facilities,” she told the Summit County Council Feb. 12. “They've added trails to that in this bill, as well as the impacts of tourism.”
Summit County hasn’t taken strong positions on many bills this legislative session, but County Council Chair Tonja Hanson said on KPCW's "Local News Hour" the county is in favor of HB456.
Because the tax could be used to mitigate the effects of tourism, the bill’s proposed changes mirror the 0.5% emergency services sales tax Summit County voters passed by a 3 to 1 margin in November 2024.
It was billed as a way to transfer the burden of paying for emergency response and waste disposal to visitors, who pay an estimated two-thirds of sales taxes in Summit County.
Visitors probably pay an even larger share of the transient room tax, or TRT.
Park City Manager Matt Dias explains the counties have asked for flexibility in how to spend it for years. It could happen this year as part of a compromise effort by legislators to account for Gov. Spencer Cox’s proposed Social Security tax cut.
“The governor's office desires a tax cut,” he said at the Feb. 6 city council meeting. “Cutting taxes, you need to find revenue and resources elsewhere, and there's a deal on the table about trying to use a statewide TRT increase to generate new revenue to pay for the tax cut and generate some additional revenue for things like economic development projects throughout the state.”
Dias said legislators were thinking about a 2% increase statewide. Young said that’s shrunk to 1%, and a rewrite of the bill is in the works.
Utah Republican Rep. Bridger Bolinder of Grantsville introduced HB456 Feb. 7.
Dias doesn’t know if the TRT bill will increase city revenues.
“One concept is you would free up the county's TRT to some degree, and then how much of that stays with the counties, or maybe how much of that is returned to municipalities that are generating it?” he said Feb. 6. “So by way of an example, the county's TRT, in Summit County, approximately 70 to 75% of that is actually generated from Park City Municipal just because of our nightly rental, short term rentals, and the extent of hotels.”
But Park City could see a boost from House Bill 256 which would curb unlicensed short-term rentals. Far less than half the short-term rentals in the county have licenses, meaning they don’t pay taxes.
HB256 would let cities and counties use online listings on sites like Airbnb and VRBO to find unlicensed rentals, which was previously not allowed.
“We've already got an RFP out for a software system that will help us manage this better, that really is coming together well with [HB256] that would give us that ability to to monitor these better,” Summit County Manager Shayne Scott said. “We want to get everybody registered. Want to get everybody paying the TRT, whether that's through an Airbnb or a hotel, get everybody on a level playing surface.”
If passed, HB456, the TRT hike, would take effect on July 1, 2025. It was scheduled for a hearing Friday morning before the House Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee.
HB256, the short-term rental regulation bill, passed the House 48-23 Feb. 10. Now it goes to the Utah Senate.
