Modern Vespa

Affaritaliani.it: Tassa sulla pipì: nel Lazio è legge. Bar liberi di far pagare romani e turisti.
http://www.affaritaliani.it/roma/tassa-sulla-pipi-nel-lazio-legge-bar-liberi-di-far-pagare-romani-turisti-630794.html?ref=ig
Incredible but true:
Rome
Friday, 11 October 2019
Pee tax: in Lazio it is law. Bars free to charge Romans and tourists.
We will not call it piss tax, but urinary deregulation. That is the faculty that in a few days the bars and restaurants of Rome and Lazio will have to charge access to public baths for those who are not customers. This was decided by the Lazio Region with a majority, after a surreal debate that lasted more than an hour in which they got excited about explaining the meaning of a surreal provision.

As soon as the new Consolidated Text on Commerce will be published in the Official Bulletin of the Lazio Region, every pizzeria, restaurant or cafeteria bar can decide whether to pay for access to the bathroom to those who do not consume, or to respect the laws that allow the release of the municipal licenses and keep the service free. To make it pay, it will be enough to put a sign "in large letters" and then decide if the bathroom is worth 1 euro or 5 euro per transit.

An example: a bar in Fontana di Trevi will be able to decide whether to rent the bathroom for a physiological need to those who do not consume, aligning prices to the value of the historic center, without any limit. You can put a nice poster in large letters and then fix the expensive pee even for 100 euros. Two kilometers away, perhaps in Prati, the same service can be sold for 20 euros and in the suburbs where tourists are scarce, aiming for a lower price and charging 5 minutes of bath for 1 euro.Pee is a fiscal dilemma

Brilliant as never before in the law, the legislators of the next door of the Lazio, with the article that rules the price of a pee, have not foreseen if the payment for his bathroom, will have fiscal value and with which VAT rate will have to be counted as revenue. Is it worth like for restaurants with 4% VAT or given that liquid is called liquid, will it pay VAT for alcohol and alcohol?

Just as there is no mention of the fact that the use of the bathroom in a cafeteria on the Ring Road, theoretically should be free and this is because before the Region has legislated the Municipality of Rome, establishing that access is free for customers and not . Why the Gra? Simple because in the internal lane it is the Municipality of Rome and in the external lane it may happen that instead the first public venue is in the Municipality of Ciampino, where the mayor has not yet decided whether to adjust the price of pee.

Chaos pee is a mental jam

This is the case of the president of the Economic Development Commission Massimiliano Maselli. He denies that it is a "tariff" and then explains with embarrassing details that the competence would be "if anything of the Municipalities". And he adds explain the norm: "We have added a paragraph to make full clarity. The regulation of the Urban Police of the Municipality of Rome explains that it is mandatory to provide the sanitary facilities to anyone who requests them. But it does not say if this service which is obliged to the operators ... not to be paid or not. And therefore each Municipality can decide whether to pay it back or for a fee. So we with this norm have for a form of clarity and transparency, argued that if ... the operator will have to make it clear ". So Maselli first says that the City has decided that pee is free for everyone and then raises a principle of "Vespasian right" and says that the City must decide and the possible tariff. Therefore, after the masterpiece that bears his signature, Virgina Raggi theoretically should put his hand back to the Municipal Trade Regulations and accept or not the new law. Then do a "due diligence" of the bathrooms of the Roman premises and establish perhaps stars as for the hotels and the relative rates. Someone warns the Rays.

The truth about paragraph 6 of article 75

Why regulate the payment of bathrooms for non-customers with a regional law? In light of the fact that the law at least in the Municipality of Rome already exists, it is clear that the jurists of the Lazio Region have succumbed to the pressures of the various lobbies, headed by the associations that bring together the Roman bars, which have always been against the rule of national law on trade, to the obligatory use of the bathrooms, because a nuisance and a cost. So to overcome the Municipality of Rome, they resorted to the classic expedient: a small paragraph within a complex law with which to cancel a provision of civilization. For a fee or not, the result is a legislative abortion that instead of delivering transparency puts the system in chaos.

On balance in a tourist city, the pee in bar business is worth more or less 10 million tourists a year and 4 million Romans plus commuters. At one pee a day for the symbolic price of 1 euro, technically the lobby could collect twenty million euros a year. It will not be an obvious tax, but an extraordinary gift yes. Everything is clearer.

Final consideration. Luckily affaritaliani.it raised the question. Thanks to the media hype, in the Region they realized that even the disabled would have to pay. Now they are considered a protected category and can have free access to services. Peacefully, bar and restaurant operators.
So...when you come on holiday in Lazio, bring a EUR 1 sack in a bag if you want to go to the bathroom in a bar.

Interesting. However I find a "Pee Tax" absolutely justified.
When I was in Italy a while ago I was surprised at the almost total lack of "public conveniences" and the established practice where where every small business was expected to provide free toilet facilities to the thousands of tourists that wander through the place.
If I were a restauranteur I would be thoroughly 'pissed off' by this. As an act of revenge there would seldom be any toilet paper or soap and I quickly learned to bring my own, not a big problem for boys but perhaps more for the girls.
After visiting many quaint 'hilltop towns' and other touristy places I noticed the multitude of churches all over the place, with even the smallest village boasting more than one, and larger towns as many as five or more.
I very quickly spotted a great business opportunity for the Church, by providing toilet facilities for the public, at a small cost. They would be easy to spot: just look for the nearest church. And the church would earn some much needed revenue. Brilliant, huh? I was going to approach the Pope with that idea but never got round to it.
Anyway, charging for toilet facilities is not such a novel idea because Germany for instance has Toilet Attendants lurking in every public facility, who make sure you pay them for the privilege of using their usually spotless facility. Makes sense.

How much is a number two?

3 baht in some beer gardens in Bangkok.

I was drinking in some street bars in China which consisted of a few plastic chairs by the side of the road. They hand you 660cl bottles of beer for next to nothing. The downside was you had to pee in the street. When in Rome and all that.

From my limited experience of using public toilets in Germany, I believe that the money is to pay for the CLEANING of the facility, not the USE of the facilities.

It is the responsibility of the municipal government to provide public toilets - not bars and restaurants. This is not a money-making activity, but it remains their duty. In the absence of free-to-use public toilet facilities, public will urinate wherever they can - against walls in alleys - and defecate behind benches and bushes in gardens and public parks. The cost of cleaning up afterwards FAR exceeds the cost of providing public toilet facilities.

Instead of shirking their responsibilities, municipal government could use the structures of the public toilets to carry advertising posters, thereby offsetting the capital and operational costs.

In some way I feel responsible for you, I must be your window on Italy for all things ... especially for those that aren't funny.

I bet they reconsider that law after a few hundred thousand people decide to just pee on the sides of the buildings upon their exit of the establishments...
Not gonna smell too nice in August.

Try using a bathroom in some places in Manhattan. Having some guy hand me a towel and expect a tip really makes you think by twice about how bad you have to go :-/

Italian folklore.

How many bars and restaurants in New Jersey make their restroom facilities available to non-customers? None do around here - and they all have large signs making that very clear.

Been to Italy on Vacation 8 times, I never minded paying a Euro to piss, at least when you paid you new there going to be clean for the most part. Quite the racket really. On the downside when we vacation especially when we were in Venice for a week last month, general rule is you have to drink to stay dehydrated, drink water stop at a bar and have a beer and a piss , rinse and repeat.
PS been from Sicily upto top of Italy, Sicily is by far my favorite, never again will we go to Northern Italy.

Where you talking to me?
I was actually talking about South Africa...!
These days building owners in parts of downtown Pretoria paint graffiti on their buildings saying:
"Please do not urinate here!"

I am old enough to remember pay toilets.

You had to put a dime in a slot to open the stall.

Urinals were free.

"Most pay toilets in the 1950s and 1960s were operated by municipalities. ... The real death knell for pay toilets came with several lawsuits filed against the municipalities by women's groups. Pay toilets were sexually discriminatory, they claimed, because women, unlike men, were forced to pay to urinate."
https://www.neatorama.com/2016/08/25/Whatever-Happened-to-Pay-Toilets/

I can't think of any that don't, and I've been in more than a few.

I have seen the signs that restrooms are for customers only in pizzerias but not in any bar/restaurant.

I had an emergency situation on a 3 hour ride this spring, and I pulled into and RAN into an Olive Garden. Good thing no sign was there or I would have had to buy a drink or an appetizer!

Here I sit broken hearted
Paid my dime and only farted.


I remember, too.

OK ... find me, i'm in the central south.

I didn't think that this topic would have aroused so much interest, certainly public hygiene was an excuse to invent a new tax ... as safe as frost.

Pisser & pissing tales:

In 1954 enroute to Calif from KS, via a greyhound bus with my Granny to visit my uncle in San Bernadino, I had no money and crawled under the stall door to do #1 in Albuquerque, NM. Some man put in his nickel in, opened the door and got ticked off at me.

In ~ 1960 my cousin on a date had to piss, used the alley next to the theater and a cop drove by, arrested him and off to jail he went.

In Zurich, Switzerland in a McDonalds upstairs pisser I was in procees doing a tinkie and in walks 3-4 teenage girls who look my way laugh then go to a stall.

I like the pissers in Ireland where you piss on the "wall"
Europe "might be"? an advanced civilization but they have a gross lack of public toilets and accomodation for disabilities! and street signs are sucky too...

Ah yes ... you're right, at first your post looked like a piece of a Kerouac story...

....redux....

All this reminds me of my first time in Germany on a month-long college class. We did a bus trip to Oberammergau in January. Walking around a bit, I got desperate to pee, darted into a public restroom near the passion play grounds....only to find I needed 10 pfennigs to use the toilet...and no urinals.*

I looked around to be sure I was alone, and well, the sink saved me.

Had been in Belgium prior to that, and still remember the shock of having a rather grumpy old woman sitting at the entrance to the men's room. Pretty easy to figure out what was going on, but still, felt rather weird and awkward for a sheltered kid.....

When I first started going to Mexico, it was pretty standard to have bathroom attendants expecting coins. Seems like over a couple of decades they've modernized, at least in Mexico City.

Travelling in India gave a new perspective on "facilities." Never had to pay though!

It's still the norm in many parts of Mexico. You typically pay a few centavos to an attendent for a small amount of toilet paper.

To Vintage's point there is the Ulm Minster
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ulm-minster-urine-damage/index.html
And I'm sure that's only because it's Europe's tallest. Degradation of the stone bases is easily spotted on many churches throughout the EU.

My wife and I worked out an efficient solution while scootering around Tuscany on our honeymoon a few years back.

She of the 0.1-liter bladder would signal me when she needed to pee. We'd pull into the first bar we encountered (the Italian sort of "bar", not the US sort). I'd plunk down a Euro for an espresso. I chugged the espresso, she used the facilities, and we'd be back on the road in a nonce.

Not making an argument on Mexico, but I've been on 3 trips total of 21,000 miles, MC self-tours there and many, many, fly & rent wife along trips and never paid to tinky there anywhere. For the record I don't stay in fancy hotels. I do carry TP on my MC and when in a rental car too.
BTW, anyone here who'd like to have a ride partner in Mexico, lets talk. Winter trips only.
Also been there twice as a young kid, 1954, 1956.
I've never forgotten my Greyhound trip to Calfornia with my Granny. That bus looked like a Hollywood nostalgia machine! Crossing the Mojave desert in the summer, no A/C and the driver made me go back and sit on the rear seat. Back then, that seat was a cover over the engine and indeed very hot!
Had this one weird old man who had this pkg wrapped in paper and string & he'd take it everywhere when we stopped. I couldn't stand not knowing what was in it and asked. He had a big chunk of farm cheese from home.
Looking back I've wondered why my granny didn't use her rail pass and my folks just buy me a RR ticket. No one to ask now.

Mayor Richard J. Daley famously declared that pay toilets must be removed from all of Chicago's airports. Soon after, Chicago became the first major city in the country to ban pay toilets altogether.