Heide

My husband and I will be visiting Santa Fe for the first time during the third week of October. We'll by flying into Albuquerque and have heard there is an outrageous tax on rental cars picked up at the airport. Is there a way to get around this?

Christina

depends on your definition of outrageous, a lot of airports do this nowadays--I've rented there, I think it's a 9 pct tax for concession fees and some facility fee of about $1.50 per day (on top of a high regular tax you can't avoid, I don't think, that's the worst). Of course you can get around it by not renting at the airport, but then you'd have a taxi fare or something to another site, of which there are many. It's up to you if it's worth it -- if you are renting for a very long period which would make that tax a lot of money, it could be worth it as there are some sites not too far away from the airport. There used to be a shuttle bus to Santa Fe called Shuttle Jack, but I think it closed down a couple years ago due to some bad practices (safety)-- you could check on that and if such a thing is operating, you could take a shuttle bus to Santa Fe and then rent a car there, I've done that also (Budget has real good rates in Santa Fe, to return at ABQ) and returned at ABQ, I think you can avoid the tax that way, but I don't pay much attention to those kinds of things, so be sure to ask on that, and maybe there was some other fee instead.

Kevin

To give you a perspective on outrageous taxes for rental cars, Phoenix's airport maxed out their car rental taxes at 25% a year or two ago!!
Not that it's a bargain now, but that was outrageous.

One option to avoid airport car rental taxes: use an offsite agency. Enterprise may offer to pick you up at the airport. Larger airports always have offsite agencies.
Go to travelocity.com and run a search for rental cars at ABQ and it'll tell you what's available.

LizF

I was in Albuquerque about 3 years ago and had paid for my rental car from the airport in Australia - I had paid all the extras as well. When I took the car back to the airport the total cost I had to pay was 87% of what I paid in the first place.
I just about fell over as I asked what it was that I was being billed for -
State Tax
Federal Tax
Local Tax
Airport Tax
came to 87% over and above what I had paid.
If they charge like that I would get my car in another state of drive into NM.
Whilst I think Santa Fe is a "must see" in the US the very thought of being fleeced again in that way would stop me going again.

Nan

Liz: something else was going on in your case....somehow your original fee (paid in advance) must have been miscalculated, or else you were dealing with an unscrupulous agency. The ABQ car rental taxes don't even add up to 20% of the bill.