Sojourn tax for boat owners in Croatia: price increases of up to 800%. Exodus of boat owners to their own home countries

Croatia, sojourn tax for boat owners. New rates have come into force. Here are the coefficients

Politicians’ memory, you know, is very short, even when the disaster is very recent.

The Croatian Government has indeed learnt nothing from the recent Italian yachting cataclysm and, pursuant to article 16 and article 20, paragraph 7 of the Sojourn Tax Act, at its session held on 4 August 2017, it adopted the decree on determining the amount of sojourn tax for 2018.

Passed over almost in silence at first, the decree has progressively raised more and more concerns until it finally came into effect, provoking, despite the efforts of the association of Croatian marinas, significant price increases of up to 800%.

More specifically, two aspects contribute to make this tax completely crazy: the sojourn tax for boat owners and the navigation safety fee, which is compulsory for all boats more than 2.5 meters in length, equipped with a propulsion system of over 5kW/hp.

Just to illustrate the concrete effects of the law, we’ll try to make two practical examples of the annual berthing rates for a motoryacht and a sailing yacht, both 14 meters in length.

These are important figures which, for boats between 12 and 15 meters in length, generally result into a 300% price increase compared to last year. Increases are of up to 850% for boats more than 20 meters in length. For a 20-meter yacht, we indeed go from € 230 of last year to almost € 2,000.00 in 2018.

During this Easter weekend, which has represented the real first occasion to set sail, many boats have left their Croatian berths to come back to the Italian, Slovenian, Greek, Turkish and many other Mediterranean marinas.

It was a serious blow to the Dalmatian yachting economy yet good news for the Adriatic port facilities which, this way, will have the opportunity to recover from their lean years, caused by the short-sighted Italian government.

If you want to take delight in the calculations of this fanciful heavy tax, please find below the tables updated to the current exchange rate.

Sojourn tax for boat owners in Croatia

Navigation Safety Fee

L = boat length

P = total engine power in kw