Quintana Roo, Mexico — At least 20 fraudulent websites have been identified in Quintana Roo that are making illegal charges for the tax known as Visitax to foreign tourists, said Bernardo Cueto Riestra, Secretary of Tourism.
The official stated that this levy, called the Right of Use of Public Domain Goods, has an official cost of 224 Mexican pesos (approximately 10 US dollars) and is mandatory for international visitors over 15 years old. However, on the fake pages, the charges exceed 500 pesos.
In response to this situation, hotel entrepreneurs have held working meetings with the State Government to modify the tax collection mechanism, due to the proliferation of false platforms that make charges without official authorization.
The Quintana Roo Tourism Secretariat (Sedetur) announced that the websites detected as cloned have already been reported to the State Attorney General’s Office, so that the Cyber Police can proceed with their tracking and removal.
The agency specified that the only authorized portal to make the payment is visitax.gob.mx, where the fee is fixed (224 pesos or 10 dollars). It also recommended that tourists not pay intermediaries or be intimidated at airports, as the procedure can be done online or at the time of leaving the state.
As part of the warnings, people were urged to carefully verify electronic addresses and avoid sites that do not end in .gob.mx, such as visitaxmex.com, which do not have government endorsement.
Similarly, representatives of the hotel sector reiterated in various meetings with state authorities that the collection of the fee should be done exclusively electronically and not through hotels, as the Government proposes. “It should be a digital and direct process,” said Roberto Cintrón Gómez, a business leader.
This issue is developing amid an intense debate between the private sector and the state administration, after the Government of Quintana Roo expressed its intention to collect up to 4 billion pesos through this concept, which would triple current revenues, according to the project presented to the local Congress.
On December 12, representatives of hotel organizations, associations, small establishments and tourism service providers held a meeting with Governor Mara Lezama Espinosa, in which they expressed their rejection of the proposal to turn hotels into collection agents for Visitax.
On the operational level, they emphasized that most hotels—especially smaller ones—lack the infrastructure, specialized personnel and technological systems to assume fiscal tasks unrelated to their main activity. They added that this has an adverse effect on the destination’s competitiveness, by generating confusion and friction with tourists, placing it at a disadvantage compared to other Caribbean points that seek to reduce administrative burdens.
On the legal front, they warned that delegating the collection of a public fee to the hotel sector could constitute an improper transfer of state functions, in addition to representing risks of unconstitutionality, similar to those observed in other collection schemes recently analyzed by the Court. They also pointed out the commercial unfeasibility of the proposal, since it is not possible to modify international rates agreed in advance to include new charges.
Yesterday in the State Congress, the issue was excluded from the revenue law by the Finance Secretariat, so there will be no variations.
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