The tourist tax in the Italian municipalities

We study the implementation of the tourist tax in Italian municipalities, highlighting the link between its reach and the inbound tourist flows. The reference period is the year 2016. Municipalities with the tourist tax in 2016 are only one ninth of all Italian municipalities and one sixth of those eligible to do so, but they attract 70 per cent of inbound tourists. Revenues are on average about 4 per cent of all local taxation (around �20 per resident). Rome, Milan, Florence and Venice head the municipalities in terms of revenues. In fact, although these four towns only account for 7 per cent of total nights spent by tourists in Italy, their revenue share is over 50 per cent. A simple econometric estimation shows that the probability of introducing a tourist tax in a municipality is highly correlated to the tourist attractions of the local area and to the same tax being applied in the neighbouring municipalities, suggesting possible strategic interaction between them