Trempealeau to wait on room tax decision

The Trempealeau village board will wait until at least 2024 before deciding whether to raise its room tax rate for hotels and visitor homes.

Village board member Bridgette Turner said at last Thursday’s meeting that the general government committee, which originally proposed the room tax hike, wants to wait to see how the recent vacation rental home ordinance affects those properties before making a decision on a room tax.

The committee talked about “Looking at how this Airbnb VRBO (ordinance) goes to maybe leave it as is and then we’ll look a year from now, see if we need to do anything with it and bring discussions back. But as it stands right now we’ve made no changes,” Turner said Thursday.

The village’s general government committee originally asked the village board in August to consider a two-part hike to its room tax, a change that would have seen the current rate of 5 percent rise 1.5 percent in 2024 before going up an additional 1.5 percent in 2026 to reach 8 percent, the maximum room tax rate allowed in Wisconsin without detailed exceptions.

Osseo is the only other county municipality that currently uses a room tax.

The village has earned about $27,000 in room tax funds since 2020, according to earlier board discussions.

Trempealeau Administrator/Finance Director Isaac Pooler told the Times in August that the increase may not be worth chasing.

“The chamber is going to be the biggest beneficiary of this, and they don’t want it. So, to me, it’s really not worth pushing to make happen,” Pooler said.