The reason the Europeans are so worked up about this - which this post pretty much ignored - has nothing to do with the amount, or even a "tourist tax". It's the way this particular tax (fee, whatever) is being imposed - through the ESTA system.

Right now, foreigners (mainly Europeans, but including some other countries) visiting under the Visa Waiver program have to go on a website and complete the "ESTA", involving a lot of questions about their trip, then also have to fill out the I-94W form in transit to the US, which pretty much duplicates the ESTA questions.

By comparison, Americans visiting these countries (with the exception of Australia) only either fill out a simple landing card to be presented on arrival (e.g. the UK) or no form at all (e.g. Spain.)

Now what the US government is proposing is imposing the $10 fee not as a tax on tickets or an arrival tax, but a fee for using the ESTA website. The Europeans' objection to this is that the combination of the fee and the advance-completion requirement for the ESTA makes the ESTA, in effect, a visa, which violates the principle of reciprocal visa-waiver.

It also adds insult to injury by only imposing the "tourist-promotion fund fee" on our closest international partners (which is why we have visa-waiver with them.)

If it was just simply a ticket tax, there wouldn't have been anything other than mild grumbling, which we could easily counter by pointing to, for example, the extravagant air taxes imposed on visitors to the UK by the travel-hating Gordon Brown's government.

And if this new travel-promotion agency is really going to benefit the US by increasing international visitors, why shouldn't Americans pay for it through the general fund?

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