Osaka’s governor wants foreign tourists to pay extra, but who is the “foreigner”?
For many years, Osaka it didn’t hit too hard on the radars of many foreign tourists. Tokyo offered more big-city glamor and Kyoto more traditional culture, leaving Osaka with little light on identity despite being Japan’s third largest city in terms of population.
In recent years, however, Osaka’s star has been rising. Affordable rail fares have made a stay in Osaka a viable base to stay while making day trips to Kyoto, Nara and Himeji while enjoying the wider range of hotel, restaurant and nightlife options that Osaka has to offer. Osaka now also boasts Universal Studios Japan, which has been aggressively partnering with Japanese anime and video game franchises, most notably in the form of its Super Nintendo World area. There is also an ongoing and deepening boom in Japanese cuisine among international foodies who have learned that Osaka has a number of delicious local specialties such as takoyaki, okonomiyaki and kushikatsu.
Indeed, Osaka’s appeal is higher than ever in the eyes of incoming international travelers. However, it may look less attractive if he is the governor of Osaka Hirofumi Yoshimura gets his and the prefecture begins charging a special surcharge only for foreign tourists.
▼ Yoshimura discusses his plan to tax foreign travelers
In a speech on Wednesday, Yoshimura cited spending on the Expo 2025 World Expo to be held in Osaka, as well as the urban development project of Osaka’s growth strategy. “As the appeal of Osaka grows, more and more [foreign tourists] will come to the prefecture,” said the 48-year-old politician. “I think we have to ask them to shoulder a little bit of the burden [of those costs].”
This logic is somewhat shaky, as foreign tourists are already being asked to contribute to the prefecture’s financial well-being. Osaka now charges an accommodation fee between ¥100 and ¥300 per hotel guest staying overnight in the prefecture when the room rate exceeds ¥7,000 (US$48) per person per night. Since this fee is charged to all guests, it is also charged to foreign travelers.
And to clarify, Yoshimura is proposing the foreign traveler fee in addition to the accommodation tax, not in place of it. Not only will the lodging tax stay the same, the prefectural government is currently considering raising it.
Yoshimura’s proposed foreign traveler fee also does not seem to recognize that foreign travelers, just like their domestic counterparts, contribute to tax revenue from other purchases they make that are subject to consumption tax, which includes dining at restaurants and access to attractions for sightseeing. Strangest of all is Yoshimura’s claim that foreign tourists must bear an additional burden to cover the costs of Expo 2025, an event designed specifically to attract visitors from other parts of the world, and according to which visitors will have to buy tickets for.
▼ If money is so tight, maybe they shouldn’t have made the fist bump sculpture in Osaka 2025.
It is not clear how Yoshimura would propose to collect the fee for foreign travelers, although the most feasible method would be to add the fee to hotel charges for rooms booked by foreign travelers. The amount of the charge will be comparable to the accommodation tax, although again it is not clear whether this is intended to be equivalent to the current tax or the possibly increased rate.
Another undefined aspect of the proposal is how a “foreign tourist” will be defined. In his speech, Yoshimura used the term gaikokujin kankushawhich translates literally as “a sight-seeer in a foreign land.” It is unclear how the system will treat foreign nationals who work, study or otherwise live in Japan. As legal residents of Japan but also foreign nationals, will they still be charged the “foreign tourist” fee?
It’s worth noting that while some other Asian countries charge higher rates for certain tourism-related fees to foreigners, this is not the norm in Japan. Yoshimura’s proposed foreign passenger fee may or may not be legal under Japanese law, and he will likely have to argue that it is not ethnically discriminatory in nature to be enacted.
Source: ABC News via Yahoo! Japan News, YouTube/ABC TV News, YouTube/MBS NEWS
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