Rome's Tourist Tax - Are You Flippin' Kidding Me??!!!

Rome, out of money and clearly out of ideas has decided to double the Tourist Tax in Sept 2014 bald-face lying - errr --- promising "improved services for tourists" that somehow never transpire -- just like this summer, in the height of tourist season, buses were cancelled - garbage piled up - and of course, pickpockets ran the joint.  Here is my update to Rome's new Mayor, Ignazio Marino: 

Dear Mayor Alemanno Mayor Marino:

Certainly, we can all understand your point of view; trying to come up with ways to arrive at month’s end – just like the rest of us – with money in the bank.  It was a stroke of pure genius – hit the captive audience that won’t crowd your city center, block traffic and hold huge sheets with protest slogans in revolt.  It’s an even better idea, considering that "other capital cities" have been charging a sojourn tax for years [Let’s ignore the fact that other cities like London or New York have over 15 million inhabitants compared to your 3.5 million - with services to match - but, who's counting?].

Regardless, since you’re a Roman resident and you’ve never had the privilege of enjoying the city as a tourist, allow me to shed some light on the subject.  You’ll find that the Tourist Tax has been levied for some time now – paid in full by tourists – your "petroleum" – a tax so widespread, it’s like an oil slick on your country.

A day in the life of a tourist in Rome

- Arriving at Rome’s airport, you’ve already paid the ‘airport tax’ in spades.  The service you receive instead?  Forced to wait in an un-airconditioned arrivals area holding pen 40 mins or longer for your bags, that is, if they arrive in the first place.  Check to see they're not missing objects handily withdrawn by the baggage handlers--the cause for the delay.

- You first run the onslaught of nefarious Taxi drivers - the Welcoming Committee that most major cities have marginalized.  But don't worry, if you don't end up getting shaken down by one of them, you can still get 'taken for a ride' by City Taxi drivers and pay a small ransom just to get to your hotel, bags intact.  I won't bore you with the litany of excuses they will make to separate you from your money above and beyond the 48 euro flat fee.

- So, you decide to be courageous and make your way to the train station where you have to pay 14 euro - $17 for a ticket to Rome's Termini station.  Just like in ‘other capitals’, except for the fact that in London the trains arrive every 4 minutes while in Rome, you might have to wait 40 minutes on a urine-filled platform (where else to void the toilets but in a closed train station), on a good day for the ‘next train’ to arrive.  At least your nose will be prepared for the onslaught of the Calcutta scene of homeless immigrants who make their home at your arrival station.

So, you decide to try your luck on the local train?  Terrific – except you have to be a soothsayer to know that the train marked for ‘Orte’ actually makes stops in Rome's center. You have no idea what stop to get off at, but you recognize Trastevere and go with that.  Then, you have to know how to buy a ticket – you can wait in a long line where the ticket vendor charges an untold €1 ‘tax’ on it, just for fun.

The 20 min train ride used to cost a reasonable € 5.50.  Overnight, the price was raised 45% to €8, in view of an improved service.  Mercifully, Trenitalia has weeded out the old luggage-less train cars (it’s an airport train, after all) and provided some modicum of modernity.  But don't worry, for nostalgia, you'll find wandering gypsies day in/day out also trying to improve their quality of life - with your pocketbook and cellphone.

Jetlagged and drowsy, you suddenly need a PhD to know about stamping your ticket in the little machines.  In ‘other capitals’, trains come with conductors who take your ticket.  But Rome is one giant tourist attraction – and on arrival, ‘You’re the protagonist!’ You get to play conductor, just like at Legoland.  In case you missed the ticket machines, a conductor will come by – to charge you 50 euro for boarding a 20 minute train without a stamped ticket. 

If you’re lucky, they’ll let you out instead – only to find yourself at a station with no personnel, no ticket machines, and the only other person is the gypsy who just stole your camera out of the front pocket of your suitcase as you dragged it behind you up the flight of steps to the street.

- Or, perhaps at the airport you decide to take a taxi.  Know that, like in other capitals, you have become a lovely fish in a tank of great white sharks (the color of Rome’s cabs).  They put the meter up a notch, or charge you tariffs for items you didn’t know exist.  At the end of the trip, you’ve spent 60 euro for a 48 euro ride, but the driver doesn’t declare his ‘extra’ income on his tax returns.

Take a taxi in the city, it’ll cost you $7 just to sit down.  But, that's not an option because you can’t find one anyway.  In ‘other capitals’, taxis roam freely, people take them regularly, and, the price stays low. I guess Adam Smith was right. Incredible how that works.

- Not wanting to deal with trains nor taxis, you rent a car instead.  Don’t forget your airport tax for that audacious request.  Get the car at Termini Station, you’re charged a train station surcharge.  And after navigating between the drunks, drug addicts, crazies and homeless beggars (Benvenuto a Roma!), you start thinking that you should be paid a Tourist Tax to go and retrieve your car out of the dank urine-stained area that is Stazione Termini Terminal (clearly suffering from an incurable disease).  While loading up your car, you discover someone has just made off with the bag you left on the seat – running right by the policemen who are busy chatting in a crowd.

- You head now to your hotel, 6 bags and all, less the one that just departed.  Near the Pantheon, you manage no problem.  Except that you just got hit with an automated-traffic ticket to the tune of 70 euro for passing through the city center, naturally - where most of the hotels are located.

As every Mayor in Italy knows and banks on, forget the 6 euro tourist tax – it's 70 euro each time they go in/out of the hotel.  Cha-ching! What a nice souvenir postcard from Bell'Italia -- in their mailboxes by the time they get home.  This perk for city coffers is kept conveniently although they could easily allow rental cars to pass right through, just like cars for the handicapped.  And those poor bastards with luggage? Let ‘em walk to their hotel (or take a taxi, who takes them round and round prior to shooting over to their nearby hotel).   

- Once you're on the open road, let’s not even consider the gas charges (5 times the USA) most of which are taxes (but payable to the State) and highway tolls.  Like ‘other cities’?  Let me explain to you the meaning behind the word, ‘freeway.’

- For the brave souls who manage to take a bus, drop in your €1.50 in coins and out spits your ticket.  Again, who’s to tell them that they then need to pass through a wall of people to the other end of the bus and ‘validate’ it in another tiny machine, different from this very unit.  That is, until the vigili grab hold of them – and charge them a fee for not having a valid ticket – payable immediately.  Of course, the meter maids won't hit up the other passengers, illegal immigrants with no tickets nor i.d., nor money; Roma Capitale counts on their tourist prey to always pay up with capital-and fast.   

Of course, the city spent upwards of 1800 euro each for thousands of their little stamp machines, lining the pockets of who knows how many politicos along the way.  Their real cost? about 23 euro - 56 if you count the installation. No wonder they're looking for more money.

- Visiting the monuments, you pay exorbitant prices for every activity that are proving out of reach for most Italians (even the ones who don’t pay their taxes). At least Italians get discounted tickets and students often go for free.  You fork over 7 euro just to take the elevator up on the big white Vittoriano monument, not to mention the $9 coca-cola you’ll drink once you’re up there.  For an entire family (and I don't need to remind you - since you lived in Pennsylvania - that unlike in uber-Catholic Italy, Americans still have children), things start to add up.   

And, what do you get for your 8 or 12 euro ticket entry price?  Hours standing in line at the great (and open air & uncrowded) Forum & Colosseum, longer still at the Quirinale and the Vatican Museums.  Go to the Borghese Gallery, and bouncers unceremoniously throw you out (!) after 2 hours, in order to protect the 15% that the ticket company makes on every single reservation.  Exceptional services like these certainly justify the Tourist Tax.

- You want to stop for a snack?  Caveat emptor!  In some countries, the motto is, ‘You break it, you buy it.’ In Italy, ‘You sit down, you shell it out’.  While sitting and eating is sort of standard practice the world over, in Italy, you pay double for the privilege.  No matter, you didn’t know that (you’re a tourist), so now you’re stung.   

At dinner, you pay more than the Rossi’s next to you, the bill is hand-written and unitemized, and there's a (supposedly outlawed but not enforced) ‘cover charge’ before they’ve even added in ‘service’ charges – and taxes.  Americans foolishly leave tips - I call them 'guilt tips' - besides.  Naturally, the restaurateurs don’t issue a receipt and don’t declare their income.   

You want a Tourist Tax, Mr. Mayor? Start getting ahold of your - now 22% VAT tax paid on every plate of pasta sold.  Tourists don't know it, but they spend 22% sales tax on everything they buy - but that money from gelato to jazz concerts rarely makes it to the tax man.

- You set out with your guide – She earns 15% on everything you buy – from the little rosary in Saint Mary Major to the normally 9 euro cutlet for which you were just charged 16 euro.  She earns in tax free income over 50,000 euro per year; all contributed by the ‘tax paying’ tourist.  But that doesn’t mean she’ll pay taxes on it herself.

All of these products and services for tourists offered by the very same citizens who don’t want to pay for their City services, but who then insist that roads are smooth, garbage is removed regularly, schools are open and hospitals are free for all and sundry.

Instead of forcing these people to pay up, just go after the ‘easy prey’ – A simple surcharge on tourist hotel rooms.  After all, tourists can’t vote.

Of course, looking for the tax evaders amongst your dear citizenry takes work.  But, watch out.  Tourists can – and do – vote.  With their feet and their wallets.  Take a look, Mr. Mayor, at TripAdvisor.com (only available from your home or office, after all, wifi services for those out and about are such a bureaucratic nightmare, no one uses them - unlike in 'other cities' where you Click N Surf seamlessly), and you’ll be inundated with people who say, ‘Never Again.’

Have a seat in Piazza Navona and ponder this, Mr. Mayor, over a bowl of gelato for two.  If it weren't for your citizens paying your bills, that luxury would run you close to $30 – you are practically renting the table, as if the proprietors, after centuries, still have to make good on the bill to Bernini for the gorgeous fountain nearby.

Rome still manages to keep tourism alive, despite the worst financial crisis since WWII.  But, instead of prizing your tourists, better to punish them; the ones who provide so many with their livelihoods. Keep going down this track, you’ll not only lose the little income the token few honest proprietors pay in taxes, you also won’t find any tourists to tax either.  You'd think the lesson of the backlash with the Japanese tourists overcharged for their meals would have been learned.  Obviously not. Since then, it's hit the U.S.  & UK press alike - you even openly apologized:

• American tourists call cops after being charged $50 for gelato 
• British tourists complain after being charged 54 pounds ($75) for gelato 

But when the tourists stop flowing in because of this cowardly and cynical manoeuvre, let’s see what your voters then have to say about it. 

From the moment they arrive to the moment they leave, the Tourist Tax is in play – just as it has been since time immemorial when they first set up toll booths in every gate going in and out of Roma Caput Mundi. 

Sadly, nearly every city in Italy, large or small has now followed suit - levying the traffic fines as well on cars in their city centers.  In any case, I have updated this post to take into consideration all the price rises over the last two years:

20% airport taxis, 16% train fares, 50% rise on bus fares and a 1 point VAT Tax raise a gift from the Monti govt.