The government is preparing a revolution for tourists. This is how accommodation fees will change

The Ministry of Finance has prepared a draft of changes regarding the so-called climate fee. The new regulations are primarily intended to tighten the tax collection system and cover a wider group of tourists. As the authors of the regulations emphasize, the current solutions are insufficiently effective and require further clarification.

Tourist tax subject to change. The end of the gray zone?

There are currently two main fees related to tourists’ stay in Poland: local fees (commonly called climatic fees) and spa fees. The former may be collected by communes with favorable climatic and landscape values, while the latter applies to 47 towns with health resort status. In the case of the spa fee, part of the revenues is co-financed by the state.

The maximum rates per day are currently PLN 3.46 for the local fee, PLN 6.67 for the health resort fee and PLN 4.89 for towns with health resort protection status. The amendment provides only minor adjustments to these amounts, at the level of a dozen or so groszy, resulting from the annual inflation indexation.

In practice, these fees are most often collected by hotel and guesthouse owners who act as municipal collectors. They add it to the guests’ bill and then transfer the funds to local governments, receiving a commission for it.

However, the system has been controversial for years. – Entrepreneurs in the tourism industry have been pointing out for years that they act as public levy collectors, which involves additional administrative obligations – explains lawyer Karolina Pilawska from the PZ Adwokaci law firm in an interview with TVN24.

Efficiency also remains an issue. – The problem is the lack of sanctions. National regulations do not give municipalities the tools to enforce the fee, says TVN24, spokeswoman for the Sopot municipality, Izabela Heidrich.

According to the tourism industry, up to 30 percent. in some communes it may take place in the gray zone, without paying any fees.

The new tourist tax. The government is preparing changes

The new project of the Ministry of Finance assumes significant changes. Entities providing accommodation services are to be formally recognized as payers, obliged to record each stay and pay the fee. An obligation to register accommodation is also to be introduced, which is intended to reduce cases of fee evasion.

The ministry is also planning to make the start of stay dependent on an advance payment and to cover all forms of accommodation in the system, including short-term rental. – If the project is really intended to tighten the system, it is difficult to imagine its effectiveness without covering the Airbnb market and similar platforms – says Karolina Pilawska.

Another change is to include the fee for all arrivals, regardless of the purpose of the visit. So far, the layoffs have included, among others: business trips, but as the ministry argues, the purpose of the stay is difficult to verify and is declarative in nature. The project also extends the collection obligation to one-day stays, which were previously not subject to payment.

At the same time, the ministry maintains that the changes are not of a fiscal nature. He emphasizes that the rate adjustments are symbolic and the main goal is to “expand the catalog of people covered by the system.”