# Tax for tourists in Italy



## pedro0001

Italy plans new tax for tourists. Italian towns will be allowed to tax tourists up to five euros ($6.30; £3.40) per day in the 2007 budget put forward by Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The complete article is here:



Am I the only one who is going to think twice before going to Italy on vacation?


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## Paulfromitaly

pedro0001 said:


> Italy plans new tax for tourists*. Some* Italian towns will be allowed to tax tourists up to five euros ($6.30; £3.40) per day in the 2007 budget put forward by Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The complete article is here:



Would spending 50 more euros in ten days be a good reason for not planning a holiday in Italy?


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## pedro0001

Paulfromitaly said:


> Would spending 50 more euros in ten days be a good reason for not planning a holiday in Italy?



Yes, it would be. For me at least. Do you know how much 50 euros are? I don't know for you but for me it is much money.


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## lsp

I won't stay away personally, but that doesn't stop me from seeing it as a punitive measure, or at least a misguided way to compensate for Italy's bad tax laws and/or enforcement, to levy another charge on people - visitors - who are already adding to the country's revenue.


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## claudine2006

pedro0001 said:


> Yes, it would be. For me at least. Do you know how much 50 euros are? I don't know for you but for me it is much money.


I've been to London where everything is very expensive: you have to pay 12 pounds to visit the Tower of London and you have to pay if you want to use the car in the city.
I don't understand why that's Ok for the UK (that's just an example, it's not the only one) and not for Italy.


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## Elibennet

Paulfromitaly said:


> Would spending 50 more euros in ten days be a good reason for not planning a holiday in Italy?



If I went with my husband and my two children I would have to spend 200 euros. This amounts to almost 800 hundred argentine pesos. That is twice my mother´s pension. IT IS a lot of money.


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## lsp

claudine2006 said:


> I've been to London where everything is very expensive: you have to pay 12 pounds to visit the Tower of London and you have to pay if you want to use the car in the city.
> I don't understand why that's Ok for the UK (that's just an example, it's not the only one) and not for Italy.



One difference - _everyone_ pays the same admission to a museum, regardless if they are native tourists or visiting tourists. (and it ain't cheap to get into the Vatican either )


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## maxiogee

pedro0001 said:


> Italy plans new tax for tourists.



It seems it is not a tax on "tourists" but rather a tax on hotel beds. That's a horse of a different colour.
If I felt that the tax was to be used to defray the expense which tourism can cause to a small locality, cleaning litter, maintenance of tourist attractions - such as antiquities and endangered places such as Venice, then I wouldn't see a problem with it.


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## paulol

claudine2006 said:


> I've been to London where everything is very expensive: you have to pay 12 pounds to visit the Tower of London and you have to pay if you want to use the car in the city.
> I don't understand why that's Ok for the UK (that's just an example, it's not the only one) and not for Italy.


That's not a tax for tourists, though. People from London have to pay the same price.

I personally would be put off going to Italy if I had to pay an extra 50 Euros for 10 days (...not being rich).


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## Paulfromitaly

maxiogee said:


> If I felt that the tax was to be used to defray the expense which tourism can cause to a small locality, cleaning litter, maintenance of tourist attractions - such as antiquities and endangered places such as Venice, then I wouldn't see a problem with it.



That seems to be one of the reasons:
Rome for example gets "flooded" by millions of tourists every year and maintenance of tourist attractions and in general of all the city services is getting really expensive.


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## Tsoman

It's just $5  (I don't have the euro sign thingy)

It wouldn't stop me from going. But then again, I'm prone to wasting money


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## GenJen54

This type of tax is not uncommon in many US cities. My city just last year passed a tax initiative where a 5% tax is charged for each hotel stay. The money is dedicated, as in Italy, to help support city-funded tourist attractions that are otherwise "free" to the public.

Many of these types of taxes are attached to specific Bond Issues, which are used to build new or significantly improve attractions, which in the end will benefit, and hopefully attract, tourists.


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## cuchuflete

So what result might be reasonably expected?  For the wealthy, this will not matter.  For much of the "middle classes", it will allow more of a vacation budget to go to the astute and brilliant government employees, to spend for whatever governments spend money on, always very wisely, of course.  For the poor, or marginally poor, such as students, it will lead to a shorter stay in Italy, if any.

For the Italian shopkeeper and restaurateur, it might be cause for a slight loss in business.

Will this be good for the Italian economy overall?   

Check back in a few years.


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## Bettie

Yeah, but in Italy you have to pay to go to the public toilettes, and in London you don't have to pay .
And ok, I have to pay to go to the Tower of London but I have to pay to get inside the Vatican too.


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## ireney

Are we talking about the same Vatican that is not part of Italy?


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## lsp

ireney said:


> Are we talking about the same Vatican that is not part of Italy?



Picky, picky  OK, change that to the formerly free Colosseum and Palatine Hill, now about $27 USD, as my example.


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## claudine2006

Bettie said:


> Yeah, but in Italy you have to pay to go to the public toilettes, and in London you don't have to pay .
> And ok, I have to pay to go to the Tower of London but I have to pay to get inside the Vatican too.


Vatican is not Italy.
In Italy you don't pay to visit a church, in England you pay to visit the Sant Paul's Cathedral.


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## maxiogee

Bettie said:


> Yeah, but in Italy you have to pay to go to the public toilettes, and in London you don't have to pay .


What's that got to do with anything? 
We all pay our taxes in different ways.


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## lsp

claudine2006 said:


> Vatican is not Italy.
> In Italy you don't pay to visit a church, in England you pay to visit the Sant Paul's Cathedral.


No, but in the interest of full disclosure, you do sometimes have to pay to turn the light on above a painting _within_ a church.


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## Bettie

claudine2006 said:


> Vatican is not Italy.
> In Italy you don't pay to visit a church, in England you pay to visit the Sant Paul's Cathedral.


 
Well, I have to pay in Venice and Florence too.
Yeah, in Italy you don't have to pay to visit churches in other countries you do, but you can choose to visit or not those places.
In Scotland a lot of museaums are free.

Yeah, but they are talking about that this taxes could help to improve tourist attractions.


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## la reine victoria

lsp said:


> No, but in the interest of full disclosure, you do sometimes have to pay to turn the light on above a painting _within_ a church.


 


Surely that's in the interests of preserving the paintings.  They shouldn't be exposed to prolonged light, it causes fading.



LRV


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## pedro0001

la reine victoria said:


> Surely that's in the interests of preserving the paintings.  They shouldn't be exposed to prolonged light, it causes fading.
> LRV



I've seen this technique also with sculptures in Italy, so that's not the reason.


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## papagainho

maxiogee said:


> It seems it is not a tax on "tourists" but rather a tax on hotel beds. That's a horse of a different colour.
> If I felt that the tax was to be used to defray the expense which tourism can cause to a small locality, cleaning litter, maintenance of tourist attractions - such as antiquities and endangered places such as Venice, then I wouldn't see a problem with it.


 
Poor Italy. Being a country that can increasy their incoming thanks to the tourism (as Spain) I don't see whay is the problem if they have to clean and take care of their art etc... I am sorry but if they don't like tourism, it is their problem, and even if 5 euros does not seem too much, for me the moral point is much important. I don't want to pay just because I am  helping the economy of the country and they don't like it...


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## maxiogee

papagainho said:


> I am sorry but if they don't like tourism, it is their problem,


Who says they don't like tourism?




papagainho said:


> for me the moral point is much important.


We all pay taxes when we go to foreign countries - some countries charge for beds, others charge for different things — there is no "moral" element involved in taxes. States need finance, how they raise that is up to those charged with the responsibilities of administration.


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## TimeHP

pedro0001 said:


> Italy plans new tax for tourists. Italian towns will be allowed to tax tourists up to five euros ($6.30; £3.40) per day in the 2007 budget put forward by Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The complete article is here:


 
For what I know:
1. Each local administration would have the possibility to tax or not.
2. The tax could be 5 € maximum, but it could be less.
3. The hostels for young would be exempted.
4. The same tax or a similar one is already existing in Francia, Grecia, Croazia, Turchia, Egitto.

Anyway it seems the tax will be rejected. 
So, please, keep on coming to Italy... 
Ciao


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## TrentinaNE

lsp said:


> One difference - _everyone_ pays the same admission to a museum, regardless if they are native tourists or visiting tourists.


When I was in India 5 years ago, many tourist spots charged non-Indians about 10 times as much for admission as the "local" rate.  Interesting concept!


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## ElaineG

TrentinaNE said:


> When I was in India 5 years ago, many tourist spots charged non-Indians about 10 times as much for admission as the "local" rate. Interesting concept!


 
Restaurants in Venezia do the same thing , although I'm not sure it's legal.  Actually, I've seen that practice in Africa -- a permit to visit the mountain gorilla preserve in Rwanda was about $10 for a Rwandan, and (I think) a couple of hundred for a foreigner.  I thought this was totally fair -- the gorillas are one of their few means of bringing foreign currency into the country, and in a country that poor, $10 is the equivalent of a couple of hundred for us.  

The only thing that bugs about a tourist tax in Italy is that in a country in which so many people from Il Cavaliere on down to the fleets of muratori working off the books are cheating on their taxes ("evasione fiscale"), it seems all too easy to stick the tourists with the taxes since they're unlikely to figure out how to get out of them. 

But I understand that Sr. Prodi has promised to crack down on the endemic cheating, so we'll see what happens.


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## maxiogee

TrentinaNE said:


> When I was in India 5 years ago, many tourist spots charged non-Indians about 10 times as much for admission as the "local" rate.  Interesting concept!



It's not unknown for governments to allow this practice as the locals are paying taxes towards the maintenance of such places as museums, national libraries, etc.
I can sympathise with the locals.


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## pickypuck

In the Balearic Islands it provoked a dramatic decrease of tourists. So one must be careful with those things.


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## Alxmrphi

Ok, please can someone tell me WHERE you pay in the Vatican, I went there a few weeks ago (well, 10 weeks) and never had to pay a thing, and we did nearly all of the stuff there.



> One difference - _everyone_ pays the same admission to a museum


 
Thankfully it is free now for all to enter public museums in England.



> Rome for example gets "flooded" by millions of tourists every year and maintenance of tourist attractions and in general of all the city services is getting really expensive.



What attraction in Rome would be so badly devastated by tourists that claims this new tax?????



> Yeah, but in Italy you have to pay to go to the public toilettes, *and in London you don't have to pay .
> *


 
Well, you haven't been around many places in London then, have you?


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## lsp

Alex_Murphy said:


> Ok, please can someone tell me WHERE you pay in the Vatican, I went there a few weeks ago (well, 10 weeks) and never had to pay a thing, and we did nearly all of the stuff there.


What free stuff did you do? The Basilica is always free, the Vatican museum is free the last Sunday of each month.


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## Alxmrphi

Basilica, tomb of the popes, we did go into some of the other things that for the life of me I can't remember, I'll do a search on their website and look for pics, to trigger my memory.


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## Brioche

Alex_Murphy said:


> Ok, please can someone tell me WHERE you pay in the Vatican, I went there a few weeks ago (well, 10 weeks) and never had to pay a thing, and we did nearly all of the stuff there.


 
It costs €12 to see the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel.

It's free on the last Sunday of the month, [or if you are under 6].


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## .   1

maxiogee said:


> It seems it is not a tax on "tourists" but rather a tax on hotel beds. That's a horse of a different colour.
> If I felt that the tax was to be used to defray the expense which tourism can cause to a small locality, cleaning litter, maintenance of tourist attractions - such as antiquities and endangered places such as Venice, then I wouldn't see a problem with it.


I agree with maxiogee.
I lived in Byron Bay for about fifteen years and saw the place become run down and dirtier by the year.
Backpackers flooded the place living dirt cheap in hostels and residential houses what had been converted to backpacker dives with a dozen or more travellers jam packed in to the one toilet, one shower house.
The backpackers pay no taxes other than G.S.T. on their purchases which seem to be mostly grog and the houses and hostels are full to bursting almost all year.
I think that the figures are something like this.
There are about 2,500 residential houses in Byron Bay but about 500 of these houses have been converted to backpacker accomodation. Each backpacker house has about 10 tenants at any one time.
This means that the infrastructure is designed for and funded by 9,000 people working and paying taxes but there are an additional 5,000 travellers living in the joint. That is an additional increase on the roads and sanitation and parks and all of the stuff that towns need to be towns of over fifty percent.
Many business make money hand over fist and the tax from these businesses go to The State not the town. Byron Bay Shire Council has to budget with 9,000 paying and 14,000 using and is virtually bankrupt. The public toilets are foul. The roads are falling apart. Footpaths and tracks are so bad that they are dangerous. Raw sewerage is often pumped straight into the ocean. Belongil Beach is a disgrace. If storm surges hit during King Tides sand is swept off the beach revealing kilometres of rusty car-bodies and wooden stakes and twisted building rubble dumped in a vain attempt to curb erosion on the cheap.
A bed tax has been mooted for years and would alieviate the problem but business are rebelling and the tax is not being paid.
I can see nothing wrong with the concept of travellers paying for what they are using when they visit towns for their holidays.
If a few travellers decide to not come because of a bed tax I doubt that many locals would weep too much.

.,,


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## lsp

Thought some of the posters might be interested in something I read today in Italy Magazine: "The government said it was scrapping an amendment to the 2007 budget which would have allowed Italian towns and cities to tax foreign and domestic visitors up to five euros per day with the charge added on to their hotel fees."


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## natasha2000

Hmm.. Maybe Italy run out of money, considering that Italian deputies in European Parliament have the highest salaries... I cannot recall now the exact amount, but I assure you it is BRUTAL, and people like me this sum leteraly HURTS the eyes.

I don't think that I understand. Tax, for what? For the air I am breathing? I already pay the bed I use. In each country there are taxes for everthing, called in some places VAT, in Spain they are from 7-16 percent, and in some other places are higher or lower, but they are TAXES also, aren't they? So, why should I pay ANOTHER tax, and so expensive one, only because I came to YOUR country to spend MY money? 

If this law passes, I don't think I'll go to see Italy. Not because of the money, but because of the principle. I think it is a robbery. I don't mind paying expenssive fees for the museums, because I know what I pay, and that I pay as everyone else. 

About my stuborness: When I went to Madrid, I refused to go to see Royal Palace, since I felt discriminated. The free entrance was allowed only to European citizens, and since I am not one of them, I should have paid the entrance. I should say that the fee was rather cheap, just to point out that sometimes it's not the money that matters, but some other, more important things.


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## Paulfromitaly

natasha2000 said:


> Hmm.. Maybe Italy run out of money, considering that Italian deputies in European Parliament have the highest salaries... I cannot recall now the exact amount, but I assure you it is BRUTAL, and people like me this sum leteraly HURTS the eyes.


 
*144.084,36 euro* a year.


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## natasha2000

Paulfromitaly said:


> *144.084,36 euro* a year.


 
Thank you.
Although my eyes are hurt again....


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