The Mogán Town Council, through its municipal technicians and the municipal company Gestiona, is finalising the tourist tax per overnight stay for the start of 2025. There is no precedent in Spain for a municipality with this type of tax, which the town council that governs in alliance with CC intends to allocate to the conservation and improvement of tourist areas. According to the analysis that is being carried out, the average tourist tax is around 2,5% or 3%, which would mean, if applied in the municipality, an approximate annual collection of 2 million euros. However, the details are still being studied and the percentage of the tax for the municipality or the method used for its application has not been defined, which will be formally announced this December.
The Mogán Town Council is presenting this Thursday in Las Palmas the measure in response to the excessive effort made by tourist municipalities with regard to the provision of services. Local Administrations have the powers and legal capacity to establish an ordinance that regulates a tax on the services they provide, as stated in the Law Regulating the Bases of Local Regime and the Law Regulating Local Finances. It is under this protection that the Mogán Town Council is carrying out a comparative law study to find out what regime and how it is applied by those European territories that have this type of regulation.
In the specific case of Spain, there are no municipalities with a tourist tax, but a regional tax is applied in communities such as Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. That is why municipal and Gestina technicians have studied how these taxes are applied in local administrations in Porto, Lisbon, Rome, Venice or Amsterdam, with the aim of knowing if it is possible to take them as a reference or adapt their method in Mogán.
In the aforementioned European centres, the tourist tax per night, that is, per person and night of accommodation in a tourist establishment, separates the taxpayer from the passive subject. The taxpayer is the tourist, who is the one who has to pay the tax, while the passive subject refers to the establishments that are dedicated to tourist accommodation – hotels, aparthotels, holiday homes, etc. –. The latter are those who have the monthly or quarterly obligation, through tax models created for this purpose, to make the corresponding payments to the municipal treasury for the tourist tax established.
