Let us begin by saying that we are truly sorry to hear about your wife.
The answer to your tax question is rather straightfoward. There are four states with no sales taxes at all. Those are: Delaware, Montana, Oregon, and New Hampshire. A fifth state, Alaska, has no state-level sales tax, but allows municipalities to impose a local level tax. In all of these states (with the exception of the local Alaska tax), there is no sales tax deduction available for residents, at least not one that they can legally claim, for their federal income tax return. This includes hotel and room taxes, fees, other surcharges, as well as New Hampshire's 9% Meals and Rooms tax.
Please see the following New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration document for more details on the nature of the tax itself:
https://www.revenue.nh.gov/faq/meals-rooms.htm
The only exception to the above discussion would be if you were self-employed, or a business owner, and you incurred the Meals & Rooms tax as part of an ordinary business travel expense. In that case you would be able to deduct the Meals & Rooms taxes paid (in addition to the cost of the underlying meal or room) as a routine business expense. But, for individuals, such a deduction is unfortunately not available, and is instead considered by the tax code as a nondeductible personal expense.
Thank you for asking this question, and please take care.
