Plenty of us hit the likes of Expedia and Hotels.com when booking hotel rooms, but if you’re planning to visit New York, you’ll want to keep your eye on a new budget that’s been proposed by the state’s capital.

The state budget proposes a 20 per cent increase in hotel taxes across New York for “travel intermediaries” – meaning travel agencies, tour operators and online travel sites. For hotel bookings in New York City, the new budget would mean taxes increasing to over 7 per cent on every booking.

The proposals are to close a loophole that the state believes has allowed companies to pay taxes on the rate at which they purchase rooms, but not on the higher price they eventually resell them for. The net result for customers is that booking directly with hotel websites may become a cheaper option than it already often is, meaning more consumers might use hotel portals for searching out rooms in their price range and then book direct.

Then again, cashback sites like Quidco effectively negate the cost of tax already – Hotels.com currently offers 8 per cent cashback on bookings – and neither could hotels directly compete with package deals that other sites offer. All that said, it’s worth checking a hotel website before booking regardless, because many include short-term special offers that don’t necessarily feature of the pages of third party aggregators.

[New York Times] via [Tnooz]