I wrote a couple of “blog”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/06/24/annals-of-stupid-lawmaking/ “posts”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/06/30/taking-the-mickey/ last year on the Mickey Tax, or, as its promoters would prefer to describe it, the ‘Travel Promotion Act’ bill, which would seek to ‘promote’ travel to the US by imposing a fee on anyone entering the country which would in turn be handed over (after costs were deducted) to an advertising slush-fund. Now the “FT is reporting”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1fa32e7e-ce05-11de-95e7-00144feabdc0.html that the European Union is threatening to retaliate against it by imposing visas on US visitors.
bq. US plans to levy fees on European Union tourists and business travellers visiting the US have come under fire in Brussels and could prompt the EU to enact its own visa-like system for US travellers, according to diplomats. … In the past, most Europeans visiting the US for less than 90 days have not had to make pre-departure arrangements. The same applies to US visitors to the EU under visa-reciprocity guidelines. “If this tax is indeed introduced, the Commission will have to re-evaluate once again whether it is tantamount to a visa,” said a spokesman for Jacques Barrot, the commissioner for justice and home affairs, on Tuesday.
If the EU carries through on this threat, American tourists to Europe who have to pay visa fees, wait in queues at overworked consulates etc, should know who is responsible – the “Walt Disney Corporation of America”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302837_pf.html.
bq. JAY RASULO STOOD IN FRONT OF TWO MASSIVE SCREENS, each projecting his balding visage, and did what he loves to do: sell a big idea. The dapper, diminutive chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts implored 500 tourist industry executives to ask the federal government for an expensive favor. … Executives from tourism giants such as Marriott, American Express and Hertz buzzed with excitement — and skepticism. Getting taxpayers to underwrite overseas commercials had been the travel industry’s Holy Grail for decades. But the idea had never gotten very far in the councils of government. … A big lobbying push was needed for a big Ask — the term lobbyists use to describe what they are pleading for from Congress.
It’s an interesting story. When it became clear that the travel industry was unlikely to get US taxpayers to pay for a $200 million travel promotion campaign, lobbyists started looking for alternative ways of raising money – and the most obvious was to top up the industry’s own efforts with the Mickey Tax. Hence the bill, and hence the possible retaliatory measures from Europe. All thanks to Jay Rasulo and his balding visage.
{ 29 comments }
mpowell 11.12.09 at 6:05 pm
You’ve got to love the @ssholes who take pride in screwing all of us peons as part of ‘just doing their job well’.
Steve LaBonne 11.12.09 at 6:24 pm
Nice to know Disney doesn’t confine its evilness to further screwing up our insane intellectual property laws.
musical mountaineer 11.12.09 at 6:52 pm
The Mouse really needs to be taken out back and shot. If I was Europe, I’d retaliate by hyper-taxing imports of Disney products. That would be far more to the point than this visa business.
Slightly OT, but worth ranting over, is the internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Don’t know what Disney has to do with this abortion, but it’s probably something.
yoyo 11.12.09 at 8:07 pm
Yeah, ‘Mickey Tax’ should be the name of tax we pay to our cultured [sic] gentry overlords.
M. Gordon 11.12.09 at 8:24 pm
Just to be slightly contrarian…I’ve noticed many times while traveling around Europe that some museums and attractions have a two-tiered pricing system, one (lower) price for tourists from EU member states, and a higher one for non-EU members, often denoted with an American flag. And, in some places, they simply ask you for more money just for being American. Is this really all that different? “Thanks for coming to visit, suck on this!”
Walt 11.12.09 at 8:42 pm
M. Gordon: Really? Where? That’s never happened to me.
Matt 11.12.09 at 9:10 pm
Walt- I’ve not been to enough Museums in the EU to say anything about most of it (I didn’t see it in the UK recently) but it’s very common in Russia. All the state-owned attractions (Museums, Kremlin, the major theater, etc.) have different prices for Russian (or sometimes CIS) citizens and non-citizens. I largely have no problem with this in principle, as tax money goes to support the institutions. In practice is does feel unpleasant and annoying, though. (What I really dislike, and avoid when I can, is paying the “foreigner” price for purely private things there.) I’d heard that a plan like this was once purposed for the museums making up the Smithsonian in Washington DC but rejected on the grounds that most Americans didn’t have a way to prove they were citizens ready-to-hand.
Henri Vieuxtemps 11.12.09 at 9:14 pm
Paestum, Italy, about 5 years ago.
hix 11.12.09 at 10:12 pm
Typically the southern touristy countries do that. They used to do it for everyone until the EU got serious about equal threatment within the EU regulation.
The mouse does the same with its theme parks by the way. Discounts for Florida residents in Disneyworld, discounts for Parisians in Disneyland Paris.. And it makes sense, especially for poorer countries. Such attractions have high fixed / low variable costs and a monopoly and the price elasticity is different for locals and tourists.
Sounds however stupid when applied to a place like Washington where you would usually want ot indoctrinate foreigners even more than locals.
digamma 11.13.09 at 1:57 am
Oy, why would you punish foreigners for giving you money? If the US is going to levy a fee on some tourists, it should be on Americans going abroad. But they shouldn’t do that either.
engels 11.13.09 at 2:26 am
As a general rule, I rather like the idea of forcing people to pay a special levy when they do something to cover the cost of having induced them to do it.
John Quiggin 11.13.09 at 2:31 am
If all visitors to the US were tourists, this would cancel out neatly. The trick is that the tax will be levied on business visitors as well. So this is good for Disney, bad for business-oriented hotels and similar.
nick s 11.13.09 at 6:04 am
Let’s also note that the means for levying the Mickey Tax is the online pre-clearance system that those wishing to visit the US under the visa waiver now have to complete, on top of the on-arrival declaration that they were not complicit in Nazi war crimes.
stostosto 11.13.09 at 9:02 am
So, how much is this travel promotion fee? Because I am planning a trip to the US next year. (Btw, it’s hard to believe they really call it that: “Travel Promotion Fee”).
musical mountaineer 11.13.09 at 10:49 am
This is bad, period. There’s nothing in the Constitution about the United States of Disney.
Barry 11.13.09 at 11:40 am
The EU should really levy a tax on those companies which supported the US tax.
Or just select them for an intensive tax audit.
chris y 11.13.09 at 12:50 pm
An export duty. How quaint. Oh, well, looks like I won’t be visiting my in-laws for a bit.
flubber 11.13.09 at 10:38 pm
A $25 fee is really going to change everyone’s behavior this much? It’s hard to believe people are this price sensitive, in the context of already spending a thousand or two on an international trip.
Salient 11.13.09 at 11:05 pm
A $25 fee is really going to change everyone’s behavior this much?
Well heck, if it really doesn’t, let’s charge a $25 fee which will go directly toward subsidies for health care, or maybe subsidize state budgets, or fund climate control initiatives, or maintain public attractions like state parks and monuments, or… whatever.
But… $25 in slush for tourism advertising? Really?
Phillip Hallam-Baker 11.14.09 at 12:11 am
What sort of cretin imagines that the way to increase tourism to the US is to introduce yet another tourism tax?
This tourism tax will kill the entire US tourism business. Disneyworld and Universal will be the first to go. Admissions revenue at the national parks will collapse forcing the closure of many of them.
And when the tourism dollars vanish, so do the convention center dollars.
This completely unsustainable tax should be known as the death tax because it is going to cause the death of the US tourism industry.
Mandos 11.14.09 at 2:34 am
We’re talking about a world in which layoffs that cause the appearance of next quarter profits result in mucho performance bonuses. Of course this will hurt US tourism, but Disney might be able to post better numbers for a quarter or two.
TW Andrews 11.14.09 at 3:43 am
Typically if you tax something, don’t people do less of it?
nick s 11.14.09 at 5:32 am
A $25 fee is really going to change everyone’s behavior this much?
If you look at, for instance, the NYT blog comments on this topic, you’ll see a combination of Europeans who are livid about it, and Americans who are unaware of it. You’ll also find lots of people for whom this is the last straw, given the advent of pre-clearance and photo/fingerprint-scanning for visa waiver visitors, increasingly arduous and Kafkaesque bureaucracy for visitors requiring visas, and the whole being-treated-like-criminals on arrival.
Visa waiver nations ought to require all advertising covered by the TPA fee carry a large notice saying that should you decide to visit the USA, you’ll be paying directly for future ads of this nature.
nick s 11.14.09 at 5:45 am
The fundamental point is that a fee-based ESTA system is a visa in all but name, and that as a result, the standard principle of visa reciprocity should apply. I doubt that the EU would require full visas for American visitors, but I suspect that the 90-day stamp they now receive might suddenly require a processing fee to pay for the ink.
Henri Vieuxtemps 11.14.09 at 11:27 am
I think as long as the dollar is cheap Europeans will come. $25 is what – 17 Euro? Price of one pizza in Paris, but two in New York.
Mike Otsuka 11.15.09 at 4:38 pm
Incidentally, a balding visage is not possible.
wolfgang 11.15.09 at 4:41 pm
How stupid are the people who currently run the US ?
In order to ‘promote travel’ you tax tourists with a fee and provoke a visa war.
Great central planning in the true spirit of the glorious soviet union …
Talleyrand 11.15.09 at 7:45 pm
It is astonishing that the US in the midst of rising anti-americanism (albeit lessened slightly now due to Obama’s popularity) should want to piss off those few people left who like America enough to visit.
Mandos 11.16.09 at 6:55 am
*points at DMCA, ACTA* The US entertainment industry has always loved to shoot itself in the foot.
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