Disneyland Forward and Taxes at VDH

[CaliAdventurer]

I’ve only read snippets about DisneylandForward this am but this sentence stood out on one well known dis site:

Disney would also move the new Disney Vacation Club rooms into more normal tax operations akin to non-time share lodging in the area to further boost tax revenue for Anaheim.

Does anyone have any light to shed on this? Worrisome or a nothing burger?

 

[CarolMN]

Disney would also move the new Disney Vacation Club rooms into more normal tax operations akin to non-time share lodging in the area to further boost tax revenue for Anaheim.

Does anyone have any light to shed on this? Worrisome or a nothing burger?

If I understand correctly, it's already been done. Guests who stay at VDH, whether on cash or on points, pay the room taxes when they check in (or maybe when they check out. I forget which). This is the same practice at all of the other hotels in the area. The only exception is for guests at VGC, the original DVC at Disneyland. Doubt they can change this for VGC. Disney made a different arrangement with the city concerning the taxes for that resort. DVC Members seem to mostly prefer the method used for VGC over that agreed to for VDH.

 

[DMPicone]

I read it like something new brought up in the discussions. All hotels and timeshares have to pay taxes. VGC had a special arrangement that lowered them. As far as I've seen the villas are viewed as a timeshare, this indicates they would reclassify them to a hotel. I don't know what that means for taxes, but somehow Anaheim benefits more than currently which means owners would suffer.

 

[drusba]

There are actually a number of prior threads on this from last year, see, e.g., www.disboards.com/threads/transient-occupancy-tax-and-vgc-owners.3916760/#post-64759265. If you stay at VDH on points, you will be charged a $2.73 per point transient tax payable when you are there. VGC has a different tax deal in that it pays a transient tax via dues, which its currently about 51 cents per point per year.

You should note that Orange County, Fl, also has a transient tax (6%, which is in addition to 6% state sales tax applicable to hotel rentals ) but it applies to rentals and thus not to timeshare stays, although if a member does a rental of a WDW DVC room, the member is supposed to pay that combined 12% tax on the amount of rent.

Transient taxes for hotel and resort stays have been around in many counties/cities now for many years. One must never forget that one of the principal jobs of elected government officials is dreaming up new ways to take your money.

 

[CaliAdventurer]

There are actually a number of prior threads on this from last year, see, e.g., www.disboards.com/threads/transient-occupancy-tax-and-vgc-owners.3916760/#post-64759265. If you stay at VDH on points, you will be charged a $2.73 per point transient tax payable when you are there. VGC has a different tax deal in that it pays a transient tax via dues, which its currently about 51 cents per point per year.

You should note that Orange County, Fl, also has a transient tax (6%, which is in addition to 6% state sales tax applicable to hotel rentals ) but it applies to rentals and thus not to timeshare stays, although if a member does a rental of a WDW DVC room, the member is supposed to pay that combined 12% tax on the amount of rent.

Transient taxes for hotel and resort stays have been around in many counties/cities now for many years. One must never forget that one of the principal jobs of elected government officials is dreaming up new ways to take your money.

Ah so, they are only referring to what’s already been done. The wording was a bit confusing by saying reclassifying/future tense. Ty!

 

[Grumpy by Birth]

The "cost" of a DVC point is certainly debatable, but I generally consider each of my points to cost me around $10 (initial buy-in price divided by the lifetime number of points for the contract, plus the annual dues per point). Using that ballpark figure for point cost would make the TOT a tax rate of 27.3% !

Based on 2025 point/TOT charts, it looks like a week stay in a studio in Season 1 will run you 97 points PLUS an additional $278.30 tax. Again using $10 as my point cost, those figures bring the tax rate up to 28.7% .

Google tells me that the TOT rate for Anaheim is 15%. If that's the tax rate VDH is subject to, then they're valuing DVC points around $19.13 each (at least for my season 1 studio example... I haven't taken time to calculate whether other room types/seasons result in the same percentage). I'm curious how they went about arriving at the "cost" of a DVC point in order to come up with $2.73/point for the TOT based on a 15% tax rate (or did they negotiate a higher/lower rate with the city?).

 

[ehh]

Transient taxes for hotel and resort stays have been around in many counties/cities now for many years. One must never forget that one of the principal jobs of elected government officials is dreaming up new ways to take your money.

Anaheim has a sweet gig here, a 100% occupancy VDH generates about $9.05mil in tax revenue in 2024 at $2.78/pt.

(in reality, occupancy is not 100%, even for DVC...but it's offset by cash stays, which have a higher tax rate and tax basis)

 

[drusba]

The "cost" of a DVC point is certainly debatable, but I generally consider each of my points to cost me around $10 (initial buy-in price divided by the lifetime number of points for the contract, plus the annual dues per point). Using that ballpark figure for point cost would make the TOT a tax rate of 27.3% !

Based on 2025 point/TOT charts, it looks like a week stay in a studio in Season 1 will run you 97 points PLUS an additional $278.30 tax. Again using $10 as my point cost, those figures bring the tax rate up to 28.7% .

Google tells me that the TOT rate for Anaheim is 15%. If that's the tax rate VDH is subject to, then they're valuing DVC points around $19.13 each (at least for my season 1 studio example... I haven't taken time to calculate whether other room types/seasons result in the same percentage). I'm curious how they went about arriving at the "cost" of a DVC point in order to come up with $2.73/point for the TOT based on a 15% tax rate (or did they negotiate a higher/lower rate with the city?).

The applicable ordinance has provisions for timeshares under which Anaheim and the timeshare developer can enter into agreements to set the terms for the transient taxes that do not apply the 15% tax. For VDH, the agreement is $2.73 per point used for the reservation and applies only if the reservation is actually used (and other than that number had to be agreed to by both parties, what actually happened in the negotiations is unknown).

When VGC opened, the agreement made was for there to be a charge per point for all ownership interests in the resort payable by VGC owners via dues. Both those agreements allow for increases to occur and VGC is now currently at about $.51 per point. As far as Anaheim getting any payments, the VDH charge applies only to actual reservations where someone shows up for the reservation, and it applies to both VDH owners reservations and reservations made by DVC owners from other resorts reserving VDH at 7-months out. For VGC, only the VGC owners pay the tax via annual dues but Anaheim gets paid the tax even during times of long shutdowns due to pandemics.

 

[DonMacGregor]

The applicable ordinance has provisions for timeshares under which Anaheim and the timeshare developer can enter into agreements to set the terms for the transient taxes that do not apply the 15% tax. For VDH, the agreement is $2.73 per point used for the reservation and applies only if the reservation is actually used (and other than that number had to be agreed to by both parties, what actually happened in the negotiations is unknown).

When VGC opened, the agreement made was for there to be a charge per point for all ownership interests in the resort payable by VGC owners via dues. Both those agreements allow for increases to occur and VGC is now currently at about $.51 per point. As far as Anaheim getting any payments, the VDH charge applies only to actual reservations where someone shows up for the reservation, and it applies to both VDH owners reservations and reservations made by DVC owners from other resorts reserving VDH at 7-months out. For VGC, only the VGC owners pay the tax via annual dues but Anaheim gets paid the tax even during times of long shutdowns due to pandemics.

And if Disney hadn’t tried everything to get out of the proposed Anaheim hospitality industry minimum wage requirement (that had to be paid by any hotel receiving any tax subsidies from the city), ultimately having Josh D’Amaro tell Anaheim they didn’t want to be part of any more tax subsidies, VDH might very well have enjoyed the same low TOT. Instead, the city played hard ball on zoning, leading to the cancellation of the new hotel originally planned for the west end of Downtown Disney, and no TOT subsidy for VDH.

Now, the city was definitely begging Disney to reopen Disneyland during the pandemic as tourism dollars virtually disappeared, and there seems to be some initial warming regarding Disneyland Forward, but there is still some reluctance at city hall to continue as a “company town”, and any thawing came too late for VDH.