Taxe de sejour

[GillianF]

Crikey, I'm feeling very blessed and lucky with Taxe de Sejour.

In the Autumn the tourist office send me a form which I fill in with numbers of adults, length of stay, persons exempt (children). I do the simple maths of people x days x 22cts per day and send a cheque. That's it!

No-one has ever reminded me to pay or chased me to pay or asked for proof of anything.

[Jentay]

We went to our meeting last night. Unfortunately, nobody could hear what the chap giving his powerpoint show was saying as he didn't have a microphone and spoke really quietly.
The taxe de sejour is only applied from April till end September in our communes. I did say that we had plenty of reservations already and that I could not ask these folks to pay on top of price agreed. Well, I was told that I had to ask and, if they refused to make a note of it - not going to do that so will cover it ourselves.

[Jentay]

We have been given a form to fill in that would be relatively simple for gites but very onerous for CdH's as details required of every nuitee. However, due to complaints I think this will be simplified. I would have thought all you would need to declare would be the number of nights and the number of exempted nights?

[Cassis]

In the Autumn the tourist office send me a form which I fill in with numbers of adults, length of stay, persons exempt (children). I do the simple maths of people x days x 22cts per day and send a cheque. That's it!

No-one has ever reminded me to pay or chased me to pay or asked for proof of anything.

Same here, Gillian, but sent from the Communauté de Communes. Except that I realise I've forgotten to send the cheque this year for 2015. So as an experiment I'm not going to send it and see what, if anything, happens. My money is on "Nothing".

[Sigrun]

We have a taxe de séjour since 2014. As I understand it, the tax has nothing to do with the bookings. Normally, the guest has to pay on arrival to the administration - in my case communauté de communes - if I rent in Charente or Finistère I make a cheque to the "tresor public", so my guests did the same or paid cash. In november I sent all cheques to the communauté de communes who wrote back to complain! They want a global cheque. So I paid it in 2015 and will deduce it as "charges" in my income tax declaration. It's only a small sum 0,22 € the day for adults.

[Cassis]

Taxe de séjour always used to calculated on a per person per night basis, the applicable rate being decided locally and varying according to the official classification of the property. There were also exemptions for children under a certain age, workers on official business in the local authority area, those in receipt of certain benefits, etc.

Recently a new way of collecting TdS has come into use, where the authorities can set a fixed amount regardless of the number of guests, instead basing the tax on the capacity of the property and the number of weeks it is open.

One or the other or neither of these methods may currently apply, depending on the decision of the local authority concerned.

With the new method where there's a fixed amount due, I don't see how it can be divided up so as to be paid by individual guests, since the owner can't know exactly how many guests he will have over a season: but that's just another example of legislation that hasn't been properly thought through and is not unusual in France.

However, TdS is always supposed to be paid by the guest to the B&B owner, hotelier, campsite owner, rental owner or online booking agent like AirBnB; that person or company is then responsible for passing the tax to the municipality or authority concerned.

If the owner makes guests write out separate cheques for it I guess that's okay, but seems a little complicated and I've never heard of it being done that way before. Everyone else I know collects it and passes it on as one payment.


For more info see https://www.service-public.fr/particuli ... oits/F2048

[Sigrun]

@ Cassis. The village I sometimes stay is owned by the commune and we always have to pay by cheque - no cash allowed - order to "tresor public".

[Cassis]

No idea what you mean by "The village I sometimes stay is owned by the commune" but the advice I have stated is true. The "Tresor Public" is the local office that takes care of payments, be they by cheque or cash.

[Ecosse]

If the owner makes guests write out separate cheques for it I guess that's okay, but seems a little complicated and I've never heard of it being done that way before. Everyone else I know collects it and passes it on as one payment.

Our commune asks that our guests to write out a separate cheque to 'tresor public', but that doesn't work for for every separate night's chambre d'hotes, so in reality we hand over a number of cheques, including a large one for the sum of the 'little' amounts. They're pretty relaxed in our mairie, mind - they basically say they don't care how they get it, just as long as we pay. Seems a better approach rather than getting all fussy about it like some of communes described in this thread!

[Cassis]

Weird - I don't think our Tresor Public would be too impressed if I gave them a couple of hundred cheques, mostly for a couple of euro!

[GRL]

Weird - I don't think our Tresor Public would be too impressed if I gave them a couple of hundred cheques, mostly for a couple of euro!

And what about people who don't have a French bank account or even a cheque book?

[Cassis]

True - only a third of our guests are French.