By RTL News··Amended:
RTL
The VAT increase for hotel rooms and other accommodations is ‘not well thought out’, ABN AMRO reports. The bank calculated how much the plan will bring in to the state treasury. What do you know? The extra tax revenue ‘could be quite disappointing’.
It concerns the VAT increase from 9 to 21 percent on hotel rooms, guesthouses and other accommodations. For example, you will soon have to pay more VAT in the safari tent on the campsite.
In the outline agreement, the cabinet proposed that the higher VAT rate would come into effect in 2026. The government expects to earn 1.2 billion euros annually from this: 910 million of the additional income will come from hotels, 300 million from other types of accommodation.
Unjustly
That calculation is not correct, ABN AMRO reports today. The government wrongly assumes that the VAT increase applies to the entire turnover of 6.8 billion euros at hotels, which was achieved in 2022. But according to the bank, the VAT increase only affects a third (34.8 percent) of the total hotel turnover.
This is mainly because almost half of hotel guests are business travellers, whose companies can reclaim VAT.
According to the bank, the cabinet must take into account ‘only’ 285 million euros in additional VAT revenue from hotels, instead of 910 million euros. But the situation could turn out even worse.
Due to the higher VAT, ABN AMRO expects declining turnover and additional costs, causing hotels to see their profits evaporate. In 2022, the government collected 147 million euros in profit tax from hotels. According to the bank, that amount can drop to zero in 2026. The same applies to other types of accommodation.
‘Economic chain reaction’
Municipalities and other governments also lose income. A decrease in the number of overnight stays leads to less tourist tax and can later also mean that the property tax decreases, because the value of hotel properties drops.
Fewer overnight stays also mean less income for restaurants and companies that sell excursions or rent out bicycles and boats, which could lead to hundreds of millions of euros in lost turnover.
For hotels in the border areas, the problems are even greater, according to the bank, because tourists will consider staying abroad, where VAT rates are lower. For example, in Belgium (6 percent), Germany (7 percent) and France (10 percent) you pay considerably less VAT than the proposed rate of 21 percent in the Netherlands.
“The planned VAT increase seems to cause more damage than it yields,” concludes the bank, which fears an ‘economic chain reaction’. Earlier, there was also fierce criticism of the VAT increase in the cultural sector, for example because of the high price of books.
