When used in this chapter and unless otherwise distinctly expressed, the following words and phrases shall have the meaning set out herein:
(a) “Fiscal Officer” means the Waterville Municipal Fiscal Officer and any of the Fiscal Officer’s assistants designated to assist in administering and enforcing the collection of the lodging tax herein levied and imposed.
(b) “Consumer” means the person, whether or not a guest, who pays or is obligated to pay the rent for the lodging of transient guest(s) in a hotel or motel.
(c) “Hotel” or “Motel” means any hotel, motel, tourist home, bed-and-breakfast, or every other establishment kept, used, maintained, advertised, or held out to the public to be a place where sleeping accommodations are offered for a consideration to a guest, in which one or more rooms are used for accommodation of such guests, whether the rooms are in one or several structures.
(d) “Lodging” means one or two or more connecting rooms in which sleeping accommodations are provided for a transient guest(s).
(e) “Municipality” means the Village of Waterville and Village Council and also the City of Waterville and City Council when, under the Constitution and laws of the State of Ohio, the Municipality shall change in statue from that of a Village to that of a City.
(f) “Person” means an individual, firm, partnership, joint venture, association, social club, fraternal organization, joint stock company, corporation, estate, trust, business trust, receiver, trustee, syndicate, the State and its political subdivisions, or any other group or combination acting as a unit.
(g) “Premises” means a parcel or contiguous parcels of real property upon which a hotel or motel is operated.
(h) “Rent”, “Sales of Lodging Services” or “Rentals” means the aggregate value in money or anything paid or delivered, or promised to be paid or delivered for hotel lodging, without any deduction for the cost of labor, service, property used, interest discount paid or allowed after the price is paid or agreed to be paid, or any other expense. “Rent” does not include:
(1) Amounts refunded for lodging not used when the full rent and tax are refunded by cash or credit; nor
(2) Cash discounts allowed at the time the lodging is furnished or contracted to be furnished.
(i) “Tax” means, unless otherwise specified, the tax levied and imposed hereby.
(j) “Transient guest(s)” means person(s) occupying a room or rooms for sleeping accommodations for less than thirty consecutive days.
(k) “Trustee” means a person or vendor who collects the tax imposed hereby from the consumer for the benefit of the Municipality.
(l) “Trust Money” means the tax imposed hereby and collected from the consumer by the trustee for the benefit of the Municipality.
(m) “Vendor” means a person who is required to have an Ohio Retail Sales Tax Vendor License and to operate a business pursuant to Ohio R.C. 5739.17, and who operates a hotel that furnishes lodging to guests and includes the agents and employees of such person who performs the functions of the vendor on his behalf. “Vendor” also includes the owner, lessee, mortgagor in possession of the real estate upon whose premises the vendor operates or has operated a hotel when the vendor is, or becomes a non-resident of Ohio or conceals his whereabouts or his property. (Ord. 06-11. Passed 3-28-11.)