𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I don’t think I’ve ever been on holiday with my family and thought ‘I wish this cost more’. But that is what the Government seem to be saying with their new Holiday Tax. By 2028 we will all be paying an average of £100-£150 more on a family summer break in England, or even more in some tourist hotspots.

Similar taxes are already underway in Wales and Scotland. It’s money that a lot of us don’t have. And two or three times more than the temporary saving on energy bills that the Government announced in the summer. The Government often say that’s it’s normal to charge these taxes. We are used to paying a few pounds extra on top of our holidays overseas. But what they don’t say is that the tax on those holidays is lower across the board.

Our big rivals charge half the VAT on a hotel. A holiday in Berlin today has 14.5% tax. In Manchester it will shortly be 27%. Hardly helpful to family budgets, or to the hopes of young people wanting summer jobs.

Independent economic research suggests that the Holiday Tax will cost about 33,000 jobs as we take fewer holidays, or just go overseas.

One of our biggest employers will lose out to countries which don’t think it’s a good idea to price families out.

People just don’t want to pay it. A consultation to implement the tax in North Wales saw 80% of tourists who responded opposed to it.

Gwynedd Council are livid. But they shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s obvious why councils like the idea of a holiday tax. You can raise revenues without taxing your residents. Win win. But the tax still has to be paid by someone.

Gwynedd taxes visitors from Norfolk. Norfolk taxes visitors from Gwynedd. Everyone’s taxes go up.

And they will keep going up, because it will always be easier for everyone to tax someone else as councils’ deficits grow. But we are all someone else.

So let me offer a little thought experiment. Instead of every mayor taxing visitors to their patch, let’s let every mayor tax their own residents and give the money to the high tourism areas.

Let the Mayor of Liverpool tax his residents to pay for their trips to Cornwall.

Make a real democratic link between who votes and who pays tax. I bet very few mayors would think it’s a good idea then.