In 2020 something changed that many operators never really took on board: the operator of the accommodation business became liable for paying the tourist tax, with a right of recovery against the guest.
Before, you were a collector: you took the money and passed it on. If a customer left without paying, that was between them and the municipality. Not any more. Now the municipality asks you for the tax, and you recover it from the guest — which, in the reality of a campground, means you recover it from nobody, because that guest left on Saturday and went home.
This shifts the weight of a mistake entirely. An exemption granted out of kindness, a wrong age threshold, a night cap nobody checked: these are no longer accounting imprecisions, they are money leaving your till.
And a campground is, of all accommodation businesses, the one where getting it wrong is easiest.
Why it is harder at a campground than at a hotel
A hotel sells rooms to people who stay three nights. A campground sells pitches and accommodation to large parties who stay two weeks, with children of different ages, visitors who turn up mid-stay and seasonal guests who have been there since April.
Four variables, all four decided by your municipality:
- The rate, which almost everywhere is different for campgrounds than for hotels, and often broken down by classification.
- The age exemption, with a threshold that changes from municipality to municipality.
- The cap on consecutive taxable nights.
- The special exemptions: group leaders, disabled guests and their carers, staff on duty, residents of the municipality.
None of these four has a national value. They are all written in your municipality's regulation, and they change when the municipality decides to change them — often with a December resolution that nobody sends you.
The calculation, done properly
Take a perfectly ordinary August case. A municipality with a rate of €1.50 per person per night for campgrounds, exemption up to and including 12 years of age, cap of 5 consecutive nights.
A party arrives: two adults, a 14-year-old, a 9-year-old girl. Stay of 7 nights.
| Guest | Taxable? | Nights counted | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult 1 | yes | 5 (cap) | €7.50 |
| Adult 2 | yes | 5 (cap) | €7.50 |
| Boy, 14 | yes | 5 (cap) | €7.50 |
| Girl, 9 | no (exempt) | — | €0.00 |
| Total | €22.50 |
Now look at the two ways this calculation goes wrong.
Overcharging. Whoever is at the desk does not apply the cap and counts all seven nights, and does not apply the exemption because "they are all customers". Result: 4 × 7 × 1.50 = €42.00. You asked a family for €19.50 too much — and if they check the regulation on the municipality's website, and some do, they write you a review with the word "irregular" in it.
Undercharging. Whoever is at the desk exempts every minor, because that is how it worked at another business. Result: 2 × 5 × 1.50 = €15.00. You owe the municipality €22.50. The difference, €7.50, comes out of your pocket.
Seven euros fifty is not frightening. Across 400 parties a season with the same wrong setting, it is €3,000 gone from your till without anyone noticing. It is the money that does not add up at the end of the year and that nobody can explain.
The night cap: the variable campgrounds feel most
The cap exists so that long stays are not taxed disproportionately. At a hotel, where the average stay is two or three nights, you almost never see it. At a campground, where a fortnight is the norm, the cap affects the majority of high-season stays.
Two details to read carefully in the regulation, because the wordings are not equivalent:
- "Consecutive nights" — if the guest leaves and comes back, does the count restart or continue? The answer changes the total for seasonal guests and for people who come and go over bank holidays.
- "Per stay" or "per calendar year" — some regulations put the cap on the single stay, others on the annual total for the same guest at the same business. For the loyal customer who comes back three times a year, that is a real difference.
Seasonal guests: the most expensive grey area
A seasonal guest keeps the pitch from April to October. If the cap is five nights, their tax is used up in the first week of April and they pay nothing for the rest of the season. So far, so easy.
The problem is the seasonal guest's visitors.
The grandchildren who spend a week in July. The friends who stay for the weekend. Their son's family arriving for the mid-August holiday. These are people spending the night at your business, and for the tourist tax they are guests like any other — with their own cap, their own exemptions, their own count.
At a great many campgrounds these visitors are not recorded at all, because "the pitch is already paid for". In an inspection it is also the easiest error to prove: you only have to compare the stays declared to the police with those declared to the municipality.
And it is worth repeating: since you became liable for the tax, that difference is not paid by the seasonal guest. It is paid by you.
Groups
School parties, scout groups, organised tours: almost every regulation provides something for group leaders — a full exemption, or one exempt leader per N participants.
Two practical warnings:
- The ratio is written in the regulation, it is not "one or two, go on". A group of 45 youngsters with 6 leaders, in a municipality that exempts one per 25, has 4 taxable leaders.
- An exemption has to be documented. If you exempt someone, you must be able to show why: the group list, a letter from the school, whatever the regulation asks for. An exemption with no supporting document is, in an inspection, an exemption that never happened.
The annual return, which is not the payment
They are two separate obligations and they get confused constantly.
The payment follows the schedule your municipality sets: monthly, quarterly, at the end of the season. You will find it in the regulation.
The return is national, electronic, annual, and reports the previous year's tax data: guests liable, guests exempt, tax due, tax collected, payments made.
They have different penalties. An omitted or inaccurate return has its own penalty, which adds to the one for failing to pay or paying late. Having paid everything correctly does not protect you if the return was never filed.
The practical consequence for a campground: the return is filled in with last year's data, but the data has to be gathered during the season. Reconstructing in March how many guests were exempt in the previous July, from a paper register, is days of work.
What you need to end up with
It is not a complicated obligation. It is an obligation that requires four pieces of data for every person who sleeps at your campground:
- How many nights they slept.
- How old they are.
- Whether an exemption applies, and which one.
- How much tax they paid.
If these four already exist — because you collected them at check-in for the police filing — the calculation is arithmetic and the summary for the municipality comes out on its own. If they do not exist, the end of every quarter is an evening of reconstruction, and every error is a loss you never see.
The three things to do before you open
- Reread your municipality's regulation every year. Not last year's: this year's. Rates and thresholds are changed by resolution, and the resolution does not come to you.
- Write the rules on a sheet of paper and pin it up at the desk. Rate, age threshold, night cap, exemptions and what is needed to document them. Whoever works at reception in August is often a seasonal employee with no way of knowing.
- Decide how you record exemptions. Not "if they are exempt I don't write it down": an exempt guest has to be recorded as exempt, because that is what you need for the return and for any inspection.
On CampinGate the tourist tax is calculated per person and per night with your municipality's rules — age thresholds, night cap, exemptions — starting from the data you already entered at check-in, and the summary to hand in is ready. See how stays and guests are managed.
This article is an operating guide, not tax advice: the rules that matter for you are the ones in your own municipality's regulation.
