Resort fee in Russia. Dossier – TASS

TASS-FILE. September 22, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to introduce amendments to the legislation for the introduction of the resort fee is a targeted tax aimed at the development of the infrastructure of the sanatorium-resort complex of the country.

Order must be made before March 1, 2017

Resort fee in the USSR

In the USSR, the resort fee was first imposed by decree of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) on August 17, 1933 “resort fee”.

According to the document, all citizens, except servicemen and the poor who come to the resort, had to pay the one-time payment of 3 RUB on “improvement of resorts and cultural services.

in 1936 the fee was replaced by a single state duty for the permit. Since 1960, the resort fee was levied trade Union bodies, the sanatoriums and rest homes. While preserving the collection for tourists arriving on holiday in the resort without permits (its size established by legislative acts of the Union republics).

Russia

December 12, 1991 President of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin signed the law “About the resort fee from the physical persons”, which allowed to charge tourists without permits (except children, the disabled, pensioners and other categories of citizens), a fee equal to 5% of the minimum wage (SMIC). Due to the lack of controls and the fact that the growth of the size of the minimum wage used to determine tax rates lagged far behind inflation, often this fee is not collected. The law of RSFSR “About the resort collection from physical persons” has lost its force from 1 January 2004

By the early 2010s in many popular resorts abroad was introduced tourist taxes aimed at the development of infrastructure or minimize the damage from tourists (cleaning beaches, restoring buildings in historical city centres, etc.).

in the Spring of 2011 with the idea of the return of local taxes on tourists was the mayor of Anapa Tatyana Evsikova and the Governor of Stavropol territory Valery Gajewski. However, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation stated that fees will not cover the cost of administering the new tax.

At the governmental level, the idea of imposing a tax on tourists was first proposed in September 2014, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. It was supposed that the received means will be directed on development of tourist infrastructure in the resort regions of the country, and also Moscow and St. Petersburg.

in the Summer of 2015 a Ministry of the North Caucasus has proposed to set a fixed fee on tourists coming to the resorts of the Stavropol region (hotels, resorts). It was assumed that as Russian citizens, and foreigners will pay up to 100 rubles a day.

August 26, 2016 at the meeting of the Presidium of the state Council of the Russian Federation Putin has demanded a cautious approach to the issue of the collection, that he was not burdensome to tourists and to the proceeds from the money went strictly for the development of resort infrastructure.