An interesting subject. I am surprised it hasn't had many more replies, so far only a few more than 'so what's in your thermos'!
This is a slippery slope, the thin end of the wedge. Yet another back-door tax and easy target just like the outrageous hiking of parking charges, also covered in this forum.
Sack the Juggler wrote:But why stop at a tourism tax, why not have a wildlife tax (a tax on the number of birds or animals you see), and sun tax (a tax on the number of sunny days in the month), a bathing tax (for when you go skinny dipping in Loch Lomond), or a deep fried Mars Bar tax to fund the additional NHS costs of treating those who eat them? Ok, some of those were a little tongue in cheek (... is there a tax for that too?) but charging tourists a tax for the pleasure of coming to spend money in a community seems to be a self defeating objective.
Quite so.
When I visit Scotland I spend money in local communities on accommodation, food, fuel etc. (but I will do much to avoid a ripoff parking charge out of principle!
). So I am adding to the wealth of that community and, it could be said, contributing to the very existence of that community in some cases where tourism is a key element of income. The same goes for tourism in many parts of the UK.
Some of my spend is collected in various taxes, and indeed should be properly allocated to the areas I visit. That is the job of politicians and councillors to achieve, part of why we elected them.
But instead, it is easier to apply another blanket tax, with the usual waffle that the tax will be used in the area for which it has been named, in this case tourism and the associated local infrastructure impacted. Rest assured that if this is introduced it will simply be used largely in general public sector expenditure. Take vehicle duty and fuel duty - only 30% of that income is spent on roads, whilst our roads crumble. It is a massive fudge to say that taxes are not allocated correctly geographically therefore there is the need to raise more tax.
I have read the COSLA document, a nice shiny thing proposing the 'Transient Visitor Tax', to me a demeaning title which sounds like some sort of disease.
Under 'benefits' it states 'The financial pressures faced by the public sector over successive years has placed significant pressure on supporting Scotland’s infrastructure including tourism'. The 'including tourism' bit appears to be a convenient add-on to the real reason behind the proposal.
Clearly, as visitor numbers increase there is the need to provide supporting infrastructure of all kinds, and surely there are business opportunities in doing this. All of which leads to higher tax revenue which as I've said should be channelled properly to those places.
Finally, and on another subject that hasn't had an airing on WH for a while, the COSLA document shows 'scenery and landscape' as by far the primary reason for tourist visits to Scotland (with 'climate and weather' being last on the list
). I wonder what impact windfarms are having on tourism? I for one won't be visiting areas dominated by these, but the way it's going could it be that soon there will be no place in Scotland where a windfarm won't be visible?
As for silly little hydro schemes and their associated motorway tracks, well..... Scotland, what have you done?