Taxing times in Venice
A tourism tax for Venice has been a vexed question since it was mooted more than 18 months ago.
The imposition of a tourism tax in Venice has been a vexed question since it was mooted more than 18 months ago. It has been delayed while authorities work out how and where to collect the money and no doubt recent horrendous flooding has exacerbated the situation. There will be exceptions such as day workers, students and the like but surely increasing the taxes on hotel rates would be easier than a tourism congestion surcharge?
Well, not quite, because a lot of visitors arrive on ships, which so angers Venetians and environmental groups that protests are common. So could the cruise companies be charged per passenger, perhaps, and the taxes added to daily accounts and then handed over to the government?
Who knows, the Italians are fond of unfathomable regulations. France is another country where red tape is tightly bound and it’s worse when you are an outsider, with limited language skills.
Witness my dear friend W, who moved to provincial France with her English husband about two decades ago and, when he died there, it took months for her to prove his demise to the satisfaction of the authorities.
A death certificate was merely an opening gambit. I helped her fill in 17 forms, each contradicting those before, and even her village neighbours just threw their hands in the air and cried “Mon dieu!”and “merde!” and much worse. The postman said a recent questionnaire on how to simplify government forms had covered 120 pages.
Of course governments need baffling rules to keep the citizenry in their place and already in Venice you’ll be fined for feeding “unconfined” pigeons in St Mark’s Square.
But what’s actually been banned is the sale of packaged grain, so theoretically you could tempt the birds with breadcrumbs, possibly snaffled from your cruise ship breakfast buffet.
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