Court Opinion

ID: 9776635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:40:59.918296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:40.811934
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. Arkansas Code Ann. § 26-52-301 (Repl. 1992) levies a gross receipts tax on the service of furnishing rooms by hotels, apartment hotels, lodging houses and tourist camps or courts to transient guests (“those who rent accommodations other than their regular place of abode on less than a month to month basis”). Ark. Code Ann. § 26-52-1002 (Repl. 1992) levies an additional tax for purposes of tourism on the same enterprises, adding motels and condominiums. I believe the taxes levied by these statutes are imposed on the services furnished by the named enterprises. The rental management of privately owned furnished condominiums in recreational and resort areas for short term usage is a familiar device. These properties are not condominiums, but it is not their legal or physical makeup that here concerns us, but the working arrangement by which revenues subject to taxation are generated. In that sense, there is not the slightest difference between the services furnished by the appellee and those provided in the rental of resort area condominiums generally. Nor can I agree that the language used in these statutes is not intended to include this operation. Accommodations are furnished to transient guests on short term rentals of less than thirty days whose regular abode is elsewhere. They are, in short, tourists, the precise object at which this tax is aimed. This enterprise may not fit the common understanding of hotels or tourist courts, but that cannot be said of the term ‘lodging house.’ These properties are rented as a unit, fully appointed and furnished in detail, without meals. Maid service is included and the arrangements are negotiated on the basis of a specific contract. These are the defining characteristics of a lodging house as distinguished from hotels and motels. Fox v. Windemere Hotel Apartment Co., 157 P. 820 (Cal. Ct. App. 1916) (“A lodging house is nonetheless such because it contains furnished apartments that are let by the week or the month”) Huntley v. Stanchfield, 169 N.W. 276 (Wis. 1918) (“A lodging housekeeper is one who deals specifically with his customers by personal contracts for the nature of the accommodation, the duration of the stay and exercising the right to reject applicants at his pleasure”); Selvetti v. Building Inspector for Revere, 233 N.W.2d 915 (Mass. 1968) (“A house in which lodgings are let, especially a house other than an inn or motel”); Hall v. Zoning Board, 549 N.E.2d 433 (Mass. App. Ct. 1990) (“Lodging houses — where tenants enter into an agreement with others under which temporary living space is provided in exchange for compensation”); Kelly v. Excise Commissioners, 54 How. Pr. (N.Y.) 327 (1877)(“A lodging house is distinguishable from an inn or hotel in that the latter furnish meals”).