The city wants hotel guests to pay a 5 percent lodging tax. Because the Free State of Bavaria prohibits this, Munich is now filing the next lawsuit.
The city of Munich is now also taking legal action before the Bavarian Constitutional Court against the ban on an overnight stay tax in the Free State. The state capital announced on Wednesday that Bamberg and Günzburg had joined the lawsuit. Munich wants to levy an overnight tax of five percent on the room rate from hotel guests. The city treasury is hoping for annual income of 60 to 80 million euros from this.
However, the state parliament prohibited the Bavarian municipalities from levying a bed tax by amending the municipal tax law. For this reason, the city of Munich had already filed a lawsuit against the Free State with the administrative court in May. This lawsuit is now on hold until the Constitutional Court has decided, said a spokesman for the city treasury.
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) said: “We will not accept this serious intervention in local self-government. The Free State is thus denying us urgently needed income. I am therefore very pleased that two other cities have already joined our lawsuit. “
The state government and the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Association fear that an overnight stay tax will harm tourism and burden hotels and guests after the corona pandemic and in times of high inflation. On the other hand, the Bavarian Association of Cities had criticized the ban on the tax. Munich City Treasurer Christoph Frey (SPD) said: “The Bavarian state government has failed to provide any meaningful justification for a ban. This is legislation bordering on arbitrariness.”