, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 6
Anything to add at all?
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 6
Thank you, Chair. I'm really grateful to you for being with us this afternoon. I know that some of you have travelled a great distance to be with us and it's really appreciated. I just want to pick up a point that the Chair raised about the impact on local…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Great, thank you. And then, finally, do you think the Bill should include a requirement for a post-implementation review?
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Thank you, Chair. I have quite specific questions, so I’ll just move on to these now. In your written evidence, you said that regulation-making powers for the Welsh Government to amend many aspects of the operation of the levy are substantial. I wonder how…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Thanks. Does anyone else want to comment?
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Perhaps just to elaborate on that a little further, in a previous evidence session with the Welsh Revenue Authority, some of their expectations about how this levy may be enforced or monitored weren't clear for them at this stage, and perhaps that's fair…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Thanks. Are there any comments from anybody else? No. Okay. Just moving on then, in terms of the costs that have been estimated by the Welsh Government to introduce the levy, in your evidence as the WLGA, you suggested that their estimated costs seem too low…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Thanks for that, and thanks, Chair. Just another thought, and it's a point that Mike often raises in the Chamber here in the Senedd. Part of the way in which the RSG is distributed is based on local authorities' ability to raise council tax revenue on its…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Okay, thanks.
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 5
Diolch, Chair, and good morning, everybody, I appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today. I just want to pick up a point that I think you all probably touched on earlier in our discussion, in relation to the risk that Welsh Government could see…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Okay. Thanks.
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks, Chair. Just in consideration of the costs, there's clearly an important role for local authorities to play within this in terms of some of the practical support, whether it's providing intelligence or, I suspect, maybe, they'll be able to support with…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Okay. I think it's fine to move on, Chair.
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
All right, that's useful, thank you. Finally, Chair, the Cabinet Secretary told us that he intends to amend the Bill at Stage 2 to require you to be the keeper of the register of visitor accommodation providers. Could you tell us about your work in preparing…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks. Would you expect a disproportionate increase in the cases where you will have to be more formal in these approaches? Because currently, I suspect, you're often approaching the middleman, as it were, or the representative of clients—so, in land…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thank you, Chair. And another specific question in relation to the Bill—paragraph 17 of the Schedule removes the requirement for you to seek approval of the tribunal before issuing a notice to a taxpayer requiring them to provide information or produce…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks. Do you feel that you have enough guidance, clarity or, when necessary, regulation around that to ensure that you're not going to be unnecessarily sharing that information?
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks, Chair. And then coming to more specific points around particular sections of the Bill, so looking at paragraph 5 of the Schedule to the Bill, it inserts a new permitted disclosure of protected taxpayer information for the purposes of your functions…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Yes, sure. Okay, Chair.
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks. Perhaps another question around this non-compliance, then. Of course, the clients and transactions that you currently deal with will very, very rarely be cash based—they'll usually be digital, of some sort. There'll be significant, or at least a…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks for that. I suspect that you, perhaps, aren't going to be the ones on the ground with a clipboard, wandering around a campsite to count the number of tenants. So, who will be, at times—? I guess there may be requirements for actually being on the…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
I guess also within that is understanding that a number of these types of clients may, as it were, be more ad hoc in terms of provision, may be less professional in terms of digital access and being used to the types of returns that may be required here. And…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Are you confident, as an organisation, to be able to scale up in time to deal with that, because, as you say, currently, perhaps there are regularly between 500 and 1,000 clients. That could increase, as you say, with 16,500 accommodation providers in Wales…
, Finance Committee
Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill: Evidence session 4
Thanks, Chair. Good morning and thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Just going back to those previous questions about your role currently with LTT and LDT, and now with this visitor levy, just help me understand the difference in scale of the…
, Finance Committee
Introductions, apologies, substitutions and declarations of interest
Diolch, Chair. I declare that I'm a member of the Caravan and Motorhome Club.
