Tourist tax is a tax that a municipality can levy on stays by people who do not live in the municipality (Article 224 of the Municipalities Act). Usually the business that provides the overnight stay is the taxpayer. It may recover the tax from the guest. That is in the same Act.
Whether you pay VAT on the amount you pass on depends on how it appears on the bill. If you show the tourist tax separately and in proportion to the stay, it falls outside VAT. If it is included without specification in an all-in price, it is part of your turnover. This follows from rulings of the Supreme Court in 1985 and of the Noord-Holland district court in 2017.
In short
- The municipality decides whether there is a tourist tax, how high it is and how you file a return. Read the bylaw of the municipality where your rooms are every year.
- Show the tourist tax as a separate line on the bill, calculated the way the municipality calculates it. Then you pay no VAT on it. A hidden or fixed surcharge does fall under VAT.
- Keep a guest register of guests and nights and set the collected amount aside. The municipality's assessment may arrive only after the year has ended.
In this article
Who has to pay tourist tax?
Usually the business that provides the overnight stay, not the guest. The Municipalities Act allows a municipality to levy tourist tax on stays within the municipality by people who are not registered there as residents (Article 224(1) of the Municipalities Act). Who has to pay the tax is set out in the municipality's bylaw.
A municipality is not obliged to levy tourist tax. The municipal council decides this itself in a bylaw (VNG, tourist tax). Business travellers and migrant workers who are not registered in the municipality can also fall under it. It is about staying, not only about tourism.
One example is the 2026 bylaw of Reusel-De Mierden. In it, the taxpayer is the person who provides the opportunity to stay. That person may recover the tax from the guest. Only if nobody provides the opportunity to stay does the guest pay himself (Tourist tax bylaw 2026 Reusel-De Mierden, Article 2). A B&B that lets rooms also provides an opportunity to stay.
How high is the tourist tax?
It differs per municipality. The municipal council chooses a fixed amount per overnight stay, a percentage of the price of the stay or a scale based on stars. With a fixed amount the rate, according to the VNG, ranges from 50 cents to a few euros per overnight stay (VNG, tourist tax).
Two examples from 2026. Reusel-De Mierden charges €2.00 per person per night (Reusel-De Mierden bylaw, Article 5). Amsterdam charges 12.5% of the price of the stay (KHN, Amsterdam tourist tax unchanged in 2026). There is no statutory maximum, and according to KHN tourist tax rose by 10% on average in 2026 (KHN, letter to the cabinet, 27 July 2026).
For 2026, municipalities together budget €654.0 million in tourist tax, 9.0% more than a year earlier. Amsterdam accounts for 42.2% of this, €275.5 million. In the other municipalities the expected revenue rises by 13.2% on average, partly because some municipalities are introducing the tax for the first time (Statistics Netherlands, 5 February 2026).
May you pass the tourist tax on to the guest?
Yes. If the tax is levied on the person who provides the opportunity to stay, that person is entitled to recover the tax as such from the guest (Article 224(2) of the Municipalities Act). Ondernemersplein puts it briefly: you may pass the tax on to your guests (Ondernemersplein, municipal taxes).
You may, but you do not have to. If you do not pass the tax on, you pay it yourself out of your room price. The tax is still owed to the municipality, because you are the taxpayer.
Passing it on is not always free. Research on a room tax in Hawaii over 1961 to 1980 found that hotels largely, but not fully, passed the tax on to visitors (Fujii, Khaled and Mak, National Tax Journal, 1985). A study of Italian municipalities in 2006 to 2011 found that introducing a tourist tax went together with fewer domestic tourists, and had no effect on foreign tourists (Biagi, Brandano and Pulina, International Journal of Tourism Research, 2017).
Those studies concern other countries and other years. What they do show is that whether a guest accepts a higher final price depends on who your guests are. A B&B with mainly Dutch guests may therefore end up differently from a city hotel with many foreign guests.
Do you have to charge VAT on the tourist tax?
Not if you pass it on separately and in proportion to the stay. Amounts that you pay on behalf of the guest as a tax disbursement are not part of the consideration on which you charge VAT (Article 4(1)(c) of the VAT Implementation Decree 1968). A disbursement is an amount you pay out and pass on in exactly the same way.
In 1985 the Supreme Court explained when tourist tax is such a disbursement. For a campsite that showed 0.25 guilders per person per night separately on the bill as tourist tax, it was a disbursement, so no VAT (Supreme Court 20 February 1985, ECLI:NL:HR:1985:BH1700). For a business that paid a fixed amount of tourist tax and built it into its prices without specification, it was not a disbursement, so VAT was due (Supreme Court 8 May 1985, ECLI:NL:HR:1985:AW8280).
In 2017 things went wrong for a business with hostels in several municipalities, which charged an all-in price. The bill showed no tourist tax line, only an amount next to "BTW 0%" (VAT 0%). The court found that this was not enough. The business also gave discounts on the whole all-in price, so also on the tourist tax, while it paid the full amount to the municipalities itself. The additional VAT assessment on the tourist tax was upheld (Noord-Holland district court 8 November 2017, ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2017:11227).
This rule comes from Dutch legislation and case law. The court noted in 2017 that the European VAT directive itself has no separate exception for tax disbursements. In that case this made no difference to the outcome, because the tourist tax had not been passed on separately in the first place (Noord-Holland district court 2017, ground 16).
How do you show the tourist tax correctly on the bill?
As a separate line called tourist tax, calculated the way the municipality calculates it. With a rate per person per night, that is the number of people times the number of nights times the rate. With a percentage, you apply the percentage to the amount named in the bylaw. The amount on the bill equals what you owe the municipality for this guest (Supreme Court 8 May 1985).
Do not give a discount on the tourist tax and do not add a mark-up. The Supreme Court requires you to pass on the same amounts that you owe (Supreme Court 8 May 1985). A discount on a price including tourist tax means the amount is no longer passed on in proportion (Noord-Holland district court 2017, ground 14). If you want to charge administration costs, show them as a separate line with VAT on the bill.
If your municipality uses a percentage, check carefully which amount it applies to. In a case about two Amsterdam campsites, from 2015 the municipality counted not only the bare overnight price but also per-person charges, showers, electricity and water. The court of appeal agreed with the municipality. The 2015 assessment for one campsite came to €142,852, while the campsite had declared €62,298.85 based on the bare price (Amsterdam court of appeal 29 September 2020, ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2020:2647).
With a package, also watch the VAT on the rest of the bill. Accommodation has fallen under 21% since 1 January 2026, and a separate breakfast under 9%. You divide an all-in price for room and breakfast according to the market value of each part, in the Belastingdienst's example 80% accommodation and 20% breakfast (Belastingdienst, VAT on accommodation). The tourist tax is separate from this, on its own line without VAT.
How do you handle tourist tax in your accounts?
With a guest register and a separate item in your bookkeeping. A bylaw can require you to keep a guest register, an overview of guests and nights that the municipality can use to check your return. In Reusel-De Mierden the municipality estimates your number of overnight stays if that register is missing (Reusel-De Mierden bylaw, Articles 12 and 13).
Sometimes the money is only due to the municipality a year later. In Reusel-De Mierden the tax year is the calendar year and an assessment follows, which you pay within six weeks. If you start letting rooms, you first report this to the municipality (Reusel-De Mierden bylaw, Articles 6, 7, 10 and 11). Other municipalities may have different deadlines.
Book the collected amount to a separate account, for example tourist tax payable. Then you can see at any moment what you still owe the municipality, and it does not get mixed with your turnover. Also set the money aside for real. Anyone who uses it as working capital for a year gets a bill at assessment time that was not in the plan.
Give the tourist tax its own item without VAT in your till or booking system. Hospitality businesses must use the cash basis, so you calculate VAT on what you receive (Belastingdienst, who must use the cash basis). With its own item, turnover per VAT rate adds up, and the tourist tax stays out of your VAT return.
Sources
- Municipalities Act (Gemeentewet), Article 224, version in force from 1 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
- VNG (Association of Netherlands Municipalities), Tourist tax, last updated 4 September 2024. vng.nl
- Municipality of Reusel-De Mierden, Tourist tax bylaw 2026, in force from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026. lokaleregelgeving.overheid.nl
- KHN, Amsterdam tourist tax unchanged in 2026 (12.5%), 19 November 2025. khn.nl
- KHN, Het glas is leeg (the glass is empty), letter to the cabinet, 27 July 2026. khn.nl
- Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Municipalities budget 15.3 billion euros in levy revenue, 5 February 2026. cbs.nl
- Ondernemersplein, Municipal taxes and levies for businesses, checked 3 September 2026. ondernemersplein.overheid.nl
- Fujii, E., Khaled, M. and Mak, J. (1985). The exportability of hotel occupancy and other tourist taxes. National Tax Journal, 38(2), 169 to 177. doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41792007
- Biagi, B., Brandano, M. G. and Pulina, M. (2017). Tourism taxation: A synthetic control method for policy evaluation. International Journal of Tourism Research, 19(5), 505 to 514. doi.org/10.1002/jtr.2123
- VAT Implementation Decree 1968 (Uitvoeringsbesluit omzetbelasting 1968), Article 4, version in force from 1 January 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
- Supreme Court of the Netherlands (Hoge Raad), 20 February 1985, no. 22.618, ECLI:NL:HR:1985:BH1700 (campsite, tourist tax shown separately on the bill). uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
- Supreme Court of the Netherlands (Hoge Raad), 8 May 1985, no. 22.936, ECLI:NL:HR:1985:AW8280 (fixed amount, passed on without specification). uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
- Noord-Holland District Court, 8 November 2017, HAA 16/4704 and 16/4705, ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2017:11227 (hostels, all-in price). uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
- Belastingdienst, From 1 January 2026: VAT rate on accommodation up to 21%, news item, 30 October 2025. belastingdienst.nl
- Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 29 September 2020, no. 19/00867, ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2020:2647 (tax base for tourist tax, campsites). uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl
- Belastingdienst, Who must use the cash basis?, accessed 29 October 2026. belastingdienst.nl