Originally Posted by
PWMTrav
I immediately started to wonder if this would be permissible. Can Italy really tax its own citizens' visits to a city within Italy that aren't tied directly to some product or service? I could see a tax on the services you mentioned, but it might be hard to levy a tax for merely setting foot beyond a certain public boundary. If it applies to foreigners only, that's basically a visa, and would be unheard of at the city level. I could certainly see a large tax on the first use of something (show the receipt to waive the tax for the next 30 days or whatever), but that wouldn't do much for the day trippers that truly aren't consuming any public services.
Again, I think it'd be good for the city to limit day trippers if they aren't an economic net gain (including the costs of wear and tear on infrastructure). Taxing cruise ships more heavily seems to be one way. I'm not sure how I'd get at the rest, though, and especially not Italian citizens.
I'm wondering about Airbnb. In my two Airbnb stays that I've had in Italy so far, I've had to pay the nightly tassa di soggiorno (in Rome and Florence). I assume someone's paying VAT along the way, maybe I'm wrong there. It doesn't seem to be off the books from my stays.
He didn't make it clear how it was going to work in that article, but the article I linked was part of a much larger article covering additional topics in the national paper La Stampa. What it seems is that before getting off of a cruise ship, you'd have to put money into an account online. Then when you use a service like a vaporetto, or train, it will debit from that account. When you stay in a hotel right now, you pay a 3 euro per night tax for the first seven days. What he is proposing is that if you have only a one night stay, the tax might be 8 euros.
I'm sure Italian citizens will be exempt in some way. For example, the hotel tax is not 3 euros for citizens. For vaporetto, as a citizen, I get to cut ahead of non-citizens in the line, and I pay 1.5 euros. Non-citizens have to get on a longer line, board after italian citizens, and pay 7.5 euros. So there is precedent for making tourists pay more.
The vast majority of AirBnb's don't register with local authorities, even in the USA. The landlord at your AirBnb may have collected the 3 euro per day tax, but it's not likely to have gone anywhere, but into their pocket, at least till very recently. Florence recently struck a deal with AirBnb, because none of them were handing in the tax they were collecting. They worked out some type of arrangement that the government would stop trying to close them down as illegal, if they assure them that the "tax" they collect from tourists actually goes to the government. In a recent article the mayor of florence touted this as a success, because so far, AirBnb's have turned over 2 million euros, whereas before, the "tax" was something AirBnb hosts used as a bogus rip off of tourists.
It's called tassa de soggiorno, or trip tax. If you google the Florence AirBnb community Forum, AirBnb'rs are right now discussing whether they should really hand over the money. They said that they just received an email from AirBnb in March, telling them to remember to hand over the tassa di soggiorno, and they people on the board are discussing whether or not they really have to no. It's completely unregulated.
For example, the last post from someone who rents their place out as an AirBnB says, "Ciao! In data 10 marzo ho ricevuto da Airbnb una email riguardante la nota informativa del Comune di Firenze in materia di tassa di soggiorno. Volevo chiedere agli altri ospiti fiorentini come stanno gestendo la cosa. Non mi è chiaro se, essendo stato fatto l'accordo tra Airbnb e il Comune di Firenze, si già obbligatorio farla pagare o meno." Meaning, Ciao, on March 10th I received an email from AirBnb regarding a note from the city of Florence about the tax for staying at a place overnight. I would like to know how other AirBnb hosts are managing that. It's not clear to me that this agreement between AirBnb and the city of Florence makes it obligatory to pay it or not."
Here is a link to an article in the Florence paper, mentioning the agreement between the city and AirBnb. It says that AirBnb is pulling in 100 of millions of dollars from Florence, and if AirBnb renters actually collect and hand over the tax in accordance with the agreement, it will add 10's of millions to the cities funds. A lot more than 2 million.
http://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca...rno-132092514/