If you have ever been to Tanzania and bought a woodcarving from anyone, the chances are that you paid a large tourist tax on that woodcarving. This tourist tax has been placed on woodcarvings or curios and there was a minimum tax charged of about $37 US dollars, with some fees being much higher, while the woodcarvings themselves are usually quite inexpensive.
Now, thanks in part to complaints from the travel and tourism industry, the Tanzania wood carving taxes are being removed by the Tanzanian government. According to the Minister for Natural Resource and Tourism, it was decided that the resulting damage to the tourism industry and the local people’s income outweighed the government’s attempt to use the taxes to raise money.
Tanzania woodcarvings are popular and well known in many of the local markets, as well as with most tourists that come into the country. Much of it is carved by the Makonde, who are famous for their ebony wood carvings of African people.
The Makonde carvings are a traditional form of woodcarving that shows off their tribal past, as well as tells stories about mystic tribal myths. For instance, some of these beautiful artwork examples are created as animals, as well as ceremonial masks, human figures or demons. They are of varying sizes and some have even been as large as six feet tall and taken up to nine months to carve, thus could represent a large portion of a local carver’s income.
The minister of Tourism in Tanzania told reporters that this curio or woodcarving tax was drastically hurting the local tourism industry and the people who make the woodcarvings, and that it should be removed. The local carvers are hardworking individuals who rely on their income to support themselves and their families.
He went on to say that the Tanzania woodcarving taxes are something that was also killing the government’s bid to get more tourists to come into the area since they were causing the tourists to not want to buy the work of the local people, thus hurting their incomes, as well.
However, a letter that was received by the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators had warned them that if the taxes on woodcarvings weren’t paid out, that any woodcarvings tourists bought would be confiscated from them. Due to this, many tour operators had started telling tourists to refrain from buying the woodcarvings.
The tax was said to be meant in part to help with the preservation of the local forests, but some believed that it didn’t work to punish logging or charcoal operations that work on a huge scale, but was instead only hurting the village people who make the intricate and popular woodcarvings.
However, thanks to arguments on the reasons or needs for woodcarving taxes, the tax has now been ended and no longer will tourists coming into the region be charged high tax fees if they buy some of the popular tribal woodcarvings while they are there on a tour.
