For wellness in hotels the VAT rate is 10%.
It does not matter whether the service is included in a package or requested afterwards
3' min read
3' min read
A 10% VAT rate for wellness services ancillary to hotel services, irrespective of whether they are offered, at a predetermined overall price, as part of a package including the stay and a predetermined number of beauty and/or wellness treatments, or whether they are requested by the client individually and subsequently during a specific hotel stay. With the sentence 37/1/2025 of the Cgt Bolzano thus confirms an earlier orientation of its own rendered by the then second-degree tax commission of Bolzano with the sentence 1/2/17.
The bone of contention stems from the Revenue Agency's claim for higher VAT and penalties arising from the application, deemed erroneous, of the reduced rate of 10 per cent, instead of the ordinary rate (in force in 2019) of 20 per cent, to wellness services invoiced as part of the hotel business.
Reasons for the decision
.The Bozen Court of First Instance reiterated what had already been held by the previous Tax Commission, pointing out that the ancillary nature of a service cannot derive either from the manner or the time of its acquisition, but depends on its intrinsic nature, which must be such as to enable the purchaser to satisfy in the best possible manner the need for which the main service is intended, as well as on the will of the contracting parties who conceive the ancillary service as functionally subordinate to the main one.
As such, wellness services are essentially rendered in order to make the hotel stay more comfortable, and customers understand them as functionally subordinate to the hotel contract, in relation to which they are neither exceptional in nature nor cost significantly more than an overnight stay.
Therefore, given the ancillary nature of the wellness services, it follows that the tax should not be applied autonomously to the wellness services, but that the tax proper to the main transaction should be adopted on the basis of article 12 of Presidential Decree 633/1972. In this specific case, the wellness services rendered by the hotel, regardless of whether they are offered, at a predetermined global price, as part of a package including the stay and a predetermined number of beauty and/or wellness treatments, or whether they are requested by the customer individually and subsequently during a specific hotel stay, must be subject to the reduced rate of 10% provided for by Table A, part III of Presidential Decree 633/1972.
