Edit: Followup. Also, in a recent WSJ article within the past 2 weeks, they discussed Orbitz's (possibly Expedia's) use of tax collection arbitrage to earn extra profits. Basically, Orbitz collects tax on the retail price charged to a customer for booking a website on their hotel room...but Orbitz only pays the hotel the wholesale price, on which the tax is calculated. Orbitz remits the wholesale-based amount to the hotel, which remits the amount to the state. For example: if a room is booked for $120 in a 10% hotel-tax jurisdiction directly through the hotel, the tax would be $12. However, if it is booked through Orbitz for $100,the hotel tax due is the amount Orbitz pays the hotel to book the room, which is usually a reduced/wholesale price of say, $80, resulting in an $8 tax. Orbitz doesn't reduce the tax collected from the customer--it still charges $10, but it keeps $2. Needless to say, this is actually a large source of profits for Orbitz, and for tax reasons actually lets them manage profits by booking a liability for the taxes on the theory they could eventually be liable for remitting the entire $10.