Tourist Tax toil
I recently attended the Scottish Government’s Transient Visitor Levy (Tourist Tax) public consultation event in Aberdeen. The presentation was very much based on the assumption that the Bill will be passed in Holyrood next year with the anticipation that the 32 Scottish local authorities will implement this come summer 2021.
I came away completely flabbergasted that there seemed so little understanding by the Scottish Government of how this Bill will actually impact businesses and the councils who will collect this tax.
We were told that this Visitor Levy would apply to every establishment from campsite holiday park operator to bed & breakfast to any hotel who provided a bed for overnight accommodation. The Levy would be at whatever rate the local authority set and the charge say a £1 per night plus VAT, irrespective that some small business operators are not VAT registered.
It seems that the Scottish Government has failed to recognise that no council has the mechanism currently to hold a database of businesses that this tax would be levied against or whether the tax is to be collected and paid to the council, nightly, weekly, monthly or quarterly. There is no commercially available software to administer this process and each council would have to develop their
own system. All councils are striving to cut overheads and yet this tax would require a dedicated team to be set up and run this operation. This cost along with the ongoing administration costs would have to be funded out of the tax collection monies.
As an elected Aberdeenshire councillor, I will resist any attempt for this tax to be implemented across Aberdeenshirebusinesses.therole of a council is to provide public services, we are not here to tax local businesses on their services provided to the public.
This Bill is a very dangerous attempt to bring councils into being self-funded tax collectors and should be resisted. I would urge any accommodation provider to lobby their MSP to defeat this Bill and to complete the Scottish Government’s online consultation for this which closes on 2 December.
Similarly, the public should be very much alarmed by this proposal and take similar steps to prevent this.
COUNCILLOR COLIN PIKE Aberdeenshire Council, Woodhill
House, Aberdeen