In the future, owners of foreign yachts will pay from five to a maximum of 120 euros in residence tax.
This is foreseen in the Regulation on the amount of residence tax for nautical tourism vessels, which was adopted by the Government last week.
Thus, half a year after the creation of legal assumptions, it was possible for the local administrations on the coast to collect a tax for the stay of nautical tourists, who are proverbially considered the richest.
Depending on the length of the boat and the time of stay, the fee is from five euros for a yacht up to seven meters long that stays in Montenegro for up to seven days, to a maximum of 120 euros for a boat longer than 20 meters that stays up to a year.
By determining the amount of the fee, the Government went hand in hand with owners and charterers of megayachts, because that is the maximum that can be charged even for the largest yacht permanently residing in Montenegro - the 124 meter long "Golden Odyssey".
A special billing category of "ships" was introduced, which will pay the residence tax only for a period of one year, with which the Government "covered" the category of cruise ships that constantly sail into Kotor.
It is stipulated that a ship with a length of up to 100 meters pays a fee of 50 euros, a ship with a length of up to 200 meters twice as much, and a ship with a length of over 200 meters - 150 euros per year.
According to the amendments to the Law on Residence Tax adopted this summer, it is foreseen that the tax for yachts will be charged when obtaining a vignette for a yacht, which indirectly means that this money could "go" to the account of some of the local tourist organizations of cities that are not the final destination of that yacht at all.
Thus, in practice, it could happen that, although 90 percent of the yachts that come to Montenegro stay in Tivat and the Porto Montenegro marina, the tourist office of Bar, Herceg Novi or Kotor collects the residence tax for them, if that yacht crosses the state border in Zelenica, Bar or Kotor.
More than 100 euros will be collected from the yachts from Manko Marina alone
How much potential earnings we are talking about is best confirmed by the example of Tivat, the leading yachting center in the country.
On several occasions, Porto Montenegro has pointed out that the occupancy of their marina is around 90 percent on an annual basis.
Bearing in mind that the marina has 450 moorings and the lowest proposed fee of 5 euros per yacht for seven days, the calculation shows that only yachts moored in the marina of Canadian billionaire Peter Munk should annually pay a minimum of 105.300 euros to the Municipality of Tivat in the name of residence tax.
By way of comparison, TO Tivat collected a total of 161.382 euros in tourist tax from tourists without yachts by the end of September.
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