A tax adjustment planned by the incoming Dutch government may make travel to Amsterdam and other Netherlands destinations sharply more expensive in the coming year.
The new right-leaning cabinet, formed after months of coalition negotiations since last November’s elections, has agreed on a proposal to raise the VAT, the basic tax on goods and services, on a variety of categories, including hotels. The rate would jump from 9% to 21%.
Leaders in the hotel industry have joined in a joint campaign with other affected industries, which include books, newspaper subscriptions and tickets to sporting events, concerts and festivals.
The hotel industry says it still needs the low rate while it continues to recover from Covid losses, booksellers and newspapers are painting it as an attack on literacy and sports and concert promoters say that the tax would mean only the wealthy could continue to buy tickets. They have all launched petition drives against the plan.
One side effect, though, if the plan is passed and actually reduces tourism because of the prices, might be for Amsterdam to meet its goal of limiting visitors to 20 million a year; at the moment, despite all sorts of restrictions and discouraging ad campaigns, it’s on track to exceed that figure again as it has for several years.
Image: Hotel Inntel, Zaandam
