Supreme Court ruling: Hotels not exempt from taxes during COVID shutdown

Apr. 18—CONCORD — Even though they were forced to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, New Hampshire hotels were not "damaged" in the sense that they should be exempt from property taxes, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

Eight hotel companies in Manchester, Bedford, Laconia and Keene had gone to court to challenge their taxes during Gov. Chris Sununu's 2020 shutdown of numerous businesses, including hotels. They pointed to a statute that requires local government to prorate a building's assessment "whenever a taxable building is damaged due to unintended fire or natural disaster" and cannot be used.

In a unanimous opinion, Chief Justice Gordon said the plain and ordinary reading of the law requires physical damage to a building before a town can consider the economic loss.

"We decline to read economic loss without physical damage into (the statute) where it does not exist in the plain language of the statute," MacDonald wrote.

Because the damage issue settled the matter, the court did not rule on a more complicated question — whether COVID-19 was a natural disaster. During oral arguments last December, Justice Anna Hantz Marconi questioned whether COVID-19 was a technology-caused disaster.

The case now returns to Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, where the hotels have challenged their tax valuation. In Manchester alone, three hotels have withheld $309,000 in property tax payments.