also I’ll throw in that because the yen is so weak vs the dollar at the moment (hence the overtourism), $665 a night is in of itself understating the kind of place we’re talking about. ¥100,000 in 2012 was $1,300. Minimum wage is ¥1,000/hour.
I just had a quick search on a bookings site, and 80 out of the 103 five-star hotels in Kyoto are under that threshold, and of those, 40 are under $350. If you’re being hit by the top rate then the place you’re staying in is bougie as f.
Also also, my reading of it is that it isn’t a 10% tax, it’s a stepped tax equal to 10% of the bottom of its bracket, i.e. it’s ¥10,000 regardless of whether your room was ¥100,000 or ¥300,000.
OP’s “Tourists in Kyoto will soon face a 900% increase in a tax” summary would be more accurately stated as “Tourists staying in one of Kyoto’s 23 most expensive hotels, will face a 9 percentage point increase in tax”.
10%, that’s a large difference than 900%. This is one of the times I came to the comments to see if the article is worth reading, now I guess I have to to figure out the fuck they meant
Shitty headline writing strikes again.
“900%” is both a sensationalist way of describing it, and also not even applicable to the overwhelming majority of visitors.
Yeah, it’s a hotel tax and scales with the price of the hotel. The top end (for hotel over $665 a night) is a 10% tax.
also I’ll throw in that because the yen is so weak vs the dollar at the moment (hence the overtourism), $665 a night is in of itself understating the kind of place we’re talking about. ¥100,000 in 2012 was $1,300. Minimum wage is ¥1,000/hour.
I just had a quick search on a bookings site, and 80 out of the 103 five-star hotels in Kyoto are under that threshold, and of those, 40 are under $350. If you’re being hit by the top rate then the place you’re staying in is bougie as f.
Also also, my reading of it is that it isn’t a 10% tax, it’s a stepped tax equal to 10% of the bottom of its bracket, i.e. it’s ¥10,000 regardless of whether your room was ¥100,000 or ¥300,000.
OP’s “Tourists in Kyoto will soon face a 900% increase in a tax” summary would be more accurately stated as “Tourists staying in one of Kyoto’s 23 most expensive hotels, will face a 9 percentage point increase in tax”.
10%, that’s a large difference than 900%. This is one of the times I came to the comments to see if the article is worth reading, now I guess I have to to figure out the fuck they meant
It was 1%. 1% to 10% is in fact a 900% increase, it just sounds a lot scarier than it actually is.
Yeah, it was definitely a get readers attention scare tactic. 10% tax on hotels is nothing.
It’s like saying “We had to raise our taxes to match that of Florida districts due to federal cuts by Trump”
Sensationalism, but some may be more true than others
You could read the article.
Sir/ma’am I’m from reddit, change is hard and scary
No shit, what else would I have meant?