GOLF IN PORTUGAL IS GOING TO GET MORE EXPENSIVE BECAUSE OF TAXES

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Colin@scottishgolfview.com 
(Who has just returned from a 14-day holiday on the Algarve).
Expect the green fees to be a good deal higher than they are at the moment when you return to Portugal's great golfing destination, the Algarve, next year.
When I was a cub reporter many moons ago, a senior journalist gave me two tips to follow on my golf travels.
One was to read noticeboards in the clubhouses I visit. Useful way to discover "stories" that deserve more prominence than within club membership.
The other was to read the sports pages of local newspapers when I was in different parts of the country.
Those habits have stayed with me over more than five decades of sports journalism.
So it was I discovered the following article in The Portugal News last Friday:

PORTUGUESE COURSE OWNERS FACE HUGE
TAX BILLS THEY WILL HAVE TO PASS ON 
 
Golf courses across the country (Portugal) are faced with enormous outstanding bills to the taxman due to their incorrect application of a perceived 17 per cent reduction in VAT which never was.   
Dozen of golf-course owners in Portugal are currently grappling with outstanding tax debts, estimated to stretch into millions of Euros.
In 2010, Portugal's then Socialist Government announced VAT would be increased from six to 23 per cent for the following year (2011).
Strenuous lobbying by golf associations had seeminly resulted in the imposition of a moratorium of the VAT hike, allowing course-owning bodies, many of whom were faced with fast depleting revenues from visitor green fees and strong competition from other Mediterranean golf holiday destinations, not to increase the cost of visitors' green fees.
Golf course owners were misled by Portugal's National Council for the Golf Industry who advised them to continue charging green fees at the rate of six per cent VAT.
It has since emerged that this was very bad advice - the VAT rate of 23 per cent should have been applied since 2011 on the green fees.
Now the cash-strapped Portuguese Government's Treasury is demanding that the unpaid tax be paid by the course owners sooner rather than later.
"i cannot see how the courses will manage to repay these unpaid tax debts," said Manuel Agrellos, chairman of the Portuguese Golf Federation.
"I cannot see a fiscal pardon being granted at this stage."