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Tourist tax names: what Kurtaxe, taxe de séjour, imposta di soggiorno and Ortstaxe tell an engineer
The name is a label
Tourist tax has a different name in almost every place that charges it. Germany says Kurtaxe, France says taxe de séjour, Italy says imposta di soggiorno and Vienna says Ortstaxe. Four names for the same kind of charge, and not one of them says anything about the amount. Two towns that use the same word can ask for a fixed sum per person per night in one town and a share of the room price in the next, and they can exempt different people.
What the name does tell you is which law or bylaw to look up. That is the only place where the amount is written down, along with what it is calculated on, who is exempt and from which date it applies.
One country, several words
Germany is the clearest case, because the municipality both names and sets the charge. Frickingen, a municipality in Baden-Württemberg, adopted a Kurtaxesatzung: a Kurtaxe of €2.00 per person per stay day, with business travellers and children up to sixteen exempt, in force since 1 January 2025. On Sylt the same kind of charge is a Kurabgabe, set per village rather than per island, and the exemption there is an age limit at eighteen. One country, two words, two calculations, and the exemption in one is a reason for travelling while in the other it is an age. Our Germany tax guide covers that municipal layer.
Elsewhere the name comes from higher up. Austria legislates at Land level, so Vienna's charge is an Ortstaxe, set in the city's tourism law. France has one national word, taxe de séjour, and the decision sits with the commune or its intercommunal body. Italy names the power in national law, imposta di soggiorno, and lets the commune institute it.
Great Britain now has two statutes with nearly the same title. The Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024 lets each local authority impose a charge to be known as the visitor levy. England introduced a Visitor Levy Bill on 4 November 2026, which fixes the base as a percentage of the cost of the accommodation and leaves the rate to mayors.
What to do with a name
Read the instrument behind it, and store what the instrument says rather than what the word implies. A table that files Sylt's Kurabgabe under Kurtaxe inherits the wrong exemption rule. A feed that stores a percentage without the base behind it overcharges every booking that includes breakfast. A field with a name and no effective date is correct until the first seasonal switch.
Rates move without notice, and Trippz monitors every jurisdiction it covers and pushes updates automatically. LocationTax puts that behind one API call: send a location, receive the rate with exemptions, caps and seasonal variation.
