OUTRAGEOUS taxe de séjour increases!

Employed & Self Employed Gite & Chambre d'hote Owners
#1

We have just received an email about the taxe de séjour for next year and how to pay after 1st Jan as they have a new system. Idly opened the link to find it gives new rates of TdS and ours has been increased by 50% to 1.65€ a person a night!! (Thankfully we’re not 5* where they have increased by 100%!)

We have already agreed contracts with people for next year which give the current rates of TdS so I think it is wrong to impose this at such short notice. And there is nothing in the covering email about these increases so I could have not even noticed until 14th Jan which is first date for returns,

So cross…especially as they do sweet FA for the money.

Not sure quite what to do re existing contracts…

#2

The perennial cry of taxpayers everywhere.

An increase of 82,5c/pp/pn. What % is that of the nett pp/pn?

A remarkable fiscal event took place while I was in Pakistan in 1988. The gov announced that for anyone who declared an income of less than ? rupees, income tax was voluntary!

I can’t remember whether that was before or after Zia Ul Haq imposed martial law. One result of that was that the legal system of the country was now Sharia. This led to a headline which amused the women running the Photographers’ Association office back in London

“Women axed in TV ads”

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#3

How many bookings do you have?

If not that many bookings I think for existing contracts cover the 50% yourself or otherwise the booking may start off on bad note. I guess it depends also on how many people your gite fits?

It seems unfair to do this after such a hard year. I guess they are also looking to recoup losses. Just a thought, if it is the local council are they maybe also trying to get back money they no longer get from taxe d’habitaton?

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#4

It would cost us an extra 23€ a week - and 6 weeks booked so approx 150€ which with our profit margins is not insignificant. I might as well tear up bank notes and throw them out the door for all the good this tax does.

Plus we have not increased our prices for next year, but were thinking of doing so for new bookings. And this increase of TdS scuppers that.

It is also out of all proportion as our very low season price is 395€, which we know works and gives as a goodly number of bookings. A TdS of 69€ on a rental of 395€ looks enormous and off putting. With the cleaning fee it takes it over the threshold of 500€, and I’m sure we will loose bookings. Many people don’t realise it isn’t us that imposes this (although clearly stated!).

Grrrrr…

#5

The tax de sejour goes towards funding the tourist offices (at least it does around here). When our “comcom” introduced it in 2016, it was €0.8/adult/night, it went up to 90c in 2018 so I expecting it to go up again for next year, but not received anything yet. The dinosaurs that are Gites de France always like to interfere too, they think its their right to do the star assessment and charge extra on top of their normal rating

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#6

Yes, it funds the tourist offices, and we also pay another 75€ a year for our adhesion. But ours is useless! They don’t even know what leaflets they have, and the young stagiaire who was left in charge this year knew so little about the area it was embarrassing. For three years now I have pointed out two mistakes on local map, and each time they reprint and the same mistake is there I ask them and they say “whoops, we forgot”. Not very professional… with what we all pay they could surely get an update made to the base map.

(We used to have a good person, but he has now been elevated to director of a regional museum…)

(We didn’t use gite de france for our classment - too expensive!)

#7

When we had a gite and CdH we never subscribed to the OdT. But we couldn’t escape the TDS which was increased substantially when the OdT expanded its empire and went ‘professional’. I used to include it in the price and bear the cost. But it added up when we had a number of visitors. Giteries and CdH aren’t a good way to make money.

#8

I’m not a gite owner (nor do I wish to be so) but I do remember years ago travelling to France and staying in hotels. I am almost certain that there was an advertised room price and the additional taxe was mentioned and added to the bill at check-out. This presumably offered some contractual protection to the hotelier :thinking:

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#9

Yes you are supposed to collect the tax separately on behalf of the commune, and pass it straight on to them. We have a info notice up (in a cupboard) making that clear that it’s nothing to do with us, but doesn’t really sink in.

#10

Seems I was remembering correctly… prices have always been as quoted in the detail … “plus TdS” … when we have travelled over many years …

So we just paid up…
A bit like VAT on goods… you just pay it.

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#11

or the merchant does, if attracting custom…

#12

As I say… I’ve never considered it part of a rental… and the rules say, it should not be included in the advertised rental cost… but as a separate item.

CdS is a government tax and is payable by the customer at the rate applicable on the day itself… really, I cannot see there is any problem… it’s something every customer has to pay.

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#13

Of course. But if the TdS is set at a level that is too high a proportion of the costs will loose us custom. In very low season it will be 14% on top of the nightly rate …for a luxury hotel in Paris it would be no more than 1 or 2%.

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#14

sounds like a vicious circle… :zipper_mouth_face:

Is there a “norm” for rental rates… according to the level of the accommodation??
Just wondering if the ODT are presuming the TdS is a % of the “norm” rental-rate… and therefore acceptable.

#15

The national assembly were told an average of 1-5% of nightly rate when voting in the agreement that collectivities could increase it. In cities there is much less fluctuation between high and low season costs of hotels and so on. In rural areas there’s a big difference as well as a big difference in what you can charge overall between tourist hotspots and quieter areas. But TdS makes no allowance for that, so we have to pay the same as a 4* hotel in a major town.

#16

I do not charge my guests TdS on top of their rental. I pay it out of the rental I receive. And I checked with our local tourist office. They have NO problem with my paying it for my guests.
I knew that an increase in TdS was happening - it went up steeply last year because we are not vetted by the local tourist office and we don’t have a rating. So I just increased my rental a bit more than I otherwise would have done - hopefully that will cover it again for this year.

@JJones Jane, your increase sounds horrendous!

#17

When we had to start paying taxe de sejour , as we were previously exempt to promote rural tourism, we went to the Tourist Office, which is miles away from us.
They took our details and produced a small brochure which swapped our names with an entirely different property.
They then wanted us to give them carte blanche to use our details as they thought fit, which we refused.
They agreed that we are one of the best gites in the area.
This all started when Communes were combined to Com-Coms. They have higher overheads and now charge tds to offset these charges.
A camping/chalet enterprise in a nearby village which is full of Dutch people, who bring everything with them, has just received a grant of several tens of thousands of euros, which just rubs salt in the wound.
Our guests come here because we are near to Cluny and Charolle, not Matour. In fact the only guests who went to Matour were lost upon arrival.
As far as we are concerned we have not moved and we really do not need a Tourist Office which is miles away to promote rural tourism, we do it far better ourselves.
You would really think that with all the problems tourism has been facing, that this would be the worst time to increase taxes, but perhaps they haven’t understood just how much this will get up the noses of smaller operators, who are never listened to anyway.
The larger operators, Expedia and Air B&B etc collect this tax directly from the client and it is automatically paid to the tax authorities, they do not have to stand in front of their clients and explain any huge increase and apologise for this increase.
Why should such small concerns be unpaid tax collectors for the government anyway?

#18

Yes, the hoteliers have negotiated a block rate.

#19

The government have had to give away billions because of Covid and this is just a way of getting some money back.

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#20

Except they didn’t give any of the billions to me!