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1. What is Hospitality Tax (H-Tax)?

A 2% tax charged on the sales of prepared meals and beverages within the City of Spartanburg.

2. How can H-Tax revenues be spent?

In a county in which at least $900,000 of accommodations tax is collected annually, the revenues of the hospitality tax may be used for the operation and maintenance of tourism-related activities and services, including police, fire protection, emergency medical services, and emergency-preparedness operations directly attendant to those activities.

In order to support the efforts of local partners to promote tourism and quality of life in the City of Spartanburg, City Council may designate a portion of the annual hospitality tax revenue for competitive grant awards. Council will decide the amount of such portion annually.

City Council makes the final decision on all allocations of city hospitality tax funds, including any allocations made through the competitive grant process. The Hospitality Tax Grants Advisory Committee makes recommendations to City Council on grant funding annually.

3. What are the grant eligibility requirements?

• All applicants for the competitive grant process must have an IRS Not For Profit status or be a governmental agency.
• The organization must reside or the Event/Project must take place within the corporate limits of the City of Spartanburg.
• Grantee organizations must not re-grant City H-Tax funds to other organizations. All funds must be spent on direct expenditures by the organization that receives the allocation.

4. What is the Hospitality Tax Grant review process?

Once all applications for H-Tax grant funds are received and eligibility is verified, they will be forwarded to the Hospitality Tax Grants Advisory Committee for review. Applicants will then be assigned a date and time to deliver a short presentation on their program to the committee. The committee will review and score each application and presentation based on the evaluation measures described below. The Committee will then submit its funding recommendations for review by City Council, which makes all final allocation decisions.

The committee will consider the following when evaluating requests:

• The degree to which the organization, program, project, or event is likely to draw visitors to the City of Spartanburg.
• The impact of the organization, program, project, or event has on the quality of life for City residents.
• The expected direct economic impact of the organization, program, project, or event.
• The impact of the event on the image and marketing of Spartanburg as a dynamic and appealing community.
• The degree to which the applying organization or event promotes and affirms racial equity in Spartanburg in accordance with Spartanburg City Council's approved "Healing, Reconciling, and Unity" resolution (PDF).
• The prior success and managerial track record of sponsoring organization.
• The degree to which the organization, project, program, or event is supported by other community partners. Applications should reflect financial support from other local partners. Hospitality Tax Grants cannot be the sole local fund source for any project, program, or event.
• The completeness of the application information.

If your organization, project, program, or event received an H-tax grant in the current year and your request is for an amount larger than that award amount, please explain specifically how the requested increase will result in increased positive community impact of the project, program, or event.