5. Conclusions
Attempts to introduce specific tourist taxes (like hotel room taxes)
have already been made in some developing and developed tourist countries like Spain,
and new proposals are to be expected in the following years.
A major aim of this article was to discuss whether levies on tourism
should be addressed through specific or general taxation.
This paper contributes to the field of tourism taxation in several ways:
(i) it formally describes the concept of tourism taxes;
(ii) it classifies the existing arguments for tourism taxation;
(iii) it analyzes the technical properties of VAT as an alternative to specific tourism taxes;
(iv) it surveys the current tax scenarios in the European Union;
and (v) it offers some numerical exercises comparing the effects of introducing room taxes and increased VAT rates