Taxes and Airport Surcharges

Sales tax and airport charges vary considerably from state to state and from country to country. Unfortunately, you probably can't avoid state and local sales taxes -- or the European equivalent, the value-added tax (VAT), which can be as high as 25 percent. (Note that in some countries you may be entitled to a partial refund of the VAT.) Many local governments also charge fees to fund local development projects, such as convention centers or sports stadiums.

However, you may be able to avoid the airport charges -- such as concession recovery fees, customer facility charges and the like -- by picking up and dropping off your car at an off-airport location. Be sure to weigh the possible inconvenience and the price of any additional transportation against the concession fees charged by the airport location -- which can total 10 percent or more of your total price.

Editor's Note: We recently got an email from a reader wondering whether the airport concession fee could be avoided by not picking up your rental car as soon as you get off the plane. If the reader went to his hotel first and then returned to a rental location near the airport to pick up his car, would he still have to pay the fee?

According to Neil Abrams, founder of Abrams Consulting, a car rental consulting and travel market research organization, the answer is yes. "If the rental location is at the airport, the rental agency is contractually required to pay the concession fee to the airport," Abrams says -- no matter whether the renter is a local or has just flown into town that day. The same generally applies to near-airport rental locations, though he notes that the fees and requirements for these properties may vary from airport to airport.

The bottom line? If you don't want to pay the airport concession fee, check out your rental options downtown.