The Principles of a Local Discretionary Transient Visitor Levy or Tourist Tax

This report presents findings from the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Principles of a Local Discretionary Transient Visitor Levy or Tourist Tax. The consultation ran from 9 September to 2 December 2019.


Footnotes

1. The 499 responses include two other types of campaign response. One campaign was based on endorsing the response submitted by the British Holiday & Home Parks Association, with 23 responses submitted. The other, associated with UK Hospitality, received 45 responses.

2. When completing the consultation, respondents were asked to indicate whether their response was submitted on behalf of an organisation or as an individual.

3. A summary of high level messages from the National Discussion may be found at https://www.gov.scot/publications/tourist-taxes-scotland-messages-national-discussion/.

4. Duplicate responses were removed before analysis. A response was counted as a duplicate when both the name and email address matched. If the content of the duplicate responses were not identical, the response submitted last was used in the analysis.

5. Organisations were placed into a group based on name and, where available, after accessing information on relevant websites, including the organisation's own website where available. The web search was carried out in December 2019.

6. Organisations who did not fall within any of the agreed respondent groups were placed in the 'Other' category. They included private sector businesses and a twinning group.

7. World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness report 2019. Pillar 8: Price Competitiveness (p77) available at http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_TTCR_2019.pdf.

8. The VAT threshold is £85,000 in 2019/20.

9. Please note that there was no option to disagree with any of the options. It is not possible, therefore, to distinguish between those who did not answer the question and those who may not have selected an option because they did not agree with it. In particular, levels of support amongst organisations have been affected by respondents to the UK Hospitality-related campaign either not answering or not choosing any of the options at Question 11.

10. Non-domestic tax rates review: Barclay report – available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/report-barclay-review-non-domestic-rates/.

11. Please note that the requirements that might be placed on local authorities to engage with local stakeholders to determine how revenues are spent is covered in greater detail at Question 22.

12. The range of issues covered here are discussed further over Questions 22 to 24 below.

13. Suggestions given for other groups who are not listed were often given at Question 32 but are covered at the analysis for Question 33.

Contact

Email: socialresearch@gov.scot

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