davidcraig2003

And yet noones explains why only NCL apply this tax to consumers when other cruise lines don’t. Not saying other lines don’t pay it, but it’s part of the cost of doing business. In europe such costs should be included in the sales price and not added afterwards

Why d It’s more of a question of why don’t NCL include the taxes in the quoted all inclusive price, the same way that msc, Costa, royal caribbean, p&o, princess, Holland America, Fred Olsen and Carnival do?

Epic doesn’t leave the EU, hence VAT is charged in all ports. It must touch a non-eu port such as Gibraltar, Isreal or Turkey to avoid VAT, except in Spanish ports/waters, where it is always applied

Just off the Norwegian Gem on Sunday, sailing Spain > Gibraltar > Spain > France > Italy. I don't want to get into the morality of it but I can explain how it worked. We had free at sea. In Spanish ports and waters, we would order a drink, swipe our card, be given a receipt with the full drink cost including service charge and VAT to sign. Normally the waiter circled the VAT cost. That is all that was charged, despite having a receipt and signing for the full amount. Generally after leaving a spanish port at 7pm, the charging regime was dropped around 9pm and then there were no receipts issued. In restaurants <9pm we were not charged VAT on drinks, I assume they tallied up the bill upon completion of the meal, after 9pm, which was helpful. We visited Gibralter which is not in the EU, therefore our cruise left Europe and we were not charged in France, Italy or Gibraltar.