VAT in definition of "taxes not included"?

On business trips in Amsterdam, even though the room was booked and paid for by my company ahead of my arrival, I was still required to pay the local tax upon check-in.

My experience with European hotels is that the advertised price invariably DOES include the VAT, but may not include additional taxes, e.g. a city hotel tax. I often use booking.com for hotel reservations & their website always breaks down what taxes are or are not included.

My experience has also been that the VAT is inclusive. However as mentioned, there may be additional special taxes. Rome, for example, has a per night per person government tax that varies according to the hotel's star rating. The hotel clerk when I checked in last summer made a big deal about it having to be collected separately.

This is a change. Historically the quoted hotel prices included the VAT tax and that was the only tax. In the past couple of years many area are adding a one or two Euro per day hotel tax which is in addition to the the VAT which is always included in the quoted price. So except to pay an extra Euro or two each day. Just following the US example of tacking on taxes.

Hi Jim, Consumer prices are required to be quoted inclusive of VAT within the EU and Switzerland. The rate however varies from country to country, about 1% goes to the cost of running the EU and the remainder goes to the national government. In some places there may be an additional local tax to pay, such as in some parts of Switzerland where you are charged a few Francs per day after a stay of a certain length, which goes towards the maintenance of the walking routes etc... in any event the local taxes should not amount to very much. Jim.

That little extra room tax can add up. In Rome, I paid 2 euro per person per night. For our party of four for 8 nights, thats 64 euro. Thats equivalent to at least 7 "I Love Roma" t-shirts, or about 20 little plastic Piazza San Pietros!