However, that seems to rarely happen, and the money is instead directed to a different project. 'We don't have a choice but to collect it and pay it to the appropriate county or state.' Some of the fees are set up to pay for a particular project, and legislatures promise that the fee will be eliminated when the project is completed. 'Those are the ones that we don't have control over,' says Faulkner. To fight this trend, the major car rental agencies have formed a trade group called Curb Automobile Rental Taxes, to direct consumers' anger toward local governments and away from the rental agencies themselves. All these fees are likely to deter some folks from renting, meaning their overall profits decrease. It views the taxes as 'discriminatory', applied unfairly to one group of taxpayers-in this case, car rental customers. The charges for civic projects like convention centers and stadiums, as well as the increased licensing fees for rental cars, are particularly galling to the American Car Rental Association. Sales Tax (6.25 percent) The standard sales tax on all purchases in the state. In addition to the standard sales taxes that states and municipalities apply to all purchases, special taxes are often levied on car rentals because politicians would rather tax visitors, who can't boot them out of office, than their own constituents, who can. They're hard to decipher ways for local governments and airports to wring more cash out of you. It turns out all those taxes and surcharges aren't hard to decipher ways for the rental companies to wring more cash out of you. What, for example, is a concession recovery fee? Why does renting an Impala for three days come with a convention center surcharge? And why on Earth am I paying a daily facility charge when the whole point is that I'm taking the car out of the facility? We know airlines are making gobs of cash by charging extra for things like checked baggage and extra legroom, but take a look at your latest car rental receipt, and you'll see you're paying for a lot of things that aren't related to, you know, getting a car.

Especially when you take your finances into account.

Combine dealing with travelers who have seemingly never flown before, TSA security checks, and the pain that is renting a car, it's enough to make one stick to FaceTime video chats. The holidays are great and all, but for those of us living across the country or around the world from our friends and relatives, slogging over long distances quickly becomes a pain.

Budget car rental receipt