Ladies returning from PInas..... This concerns you more than anybody else. At the departure airport, probably the powers that be will try to extort more money from you under the "Travel Tax" excuse. This is totally different from airport departure tax which everybody has to pay. Some people are exempt from paying the Travel tax, and you are certainly entitled to take advantage of this exemption if you are a UK permanent resident and haven't stayed 12 months or more in the Philippines... This is the bit concerning you.... Before you leave, print the page in the link, and take it with you in case the officials try to force you to pay. http://www.philtourism.com/ttax_who_avail1.html
Sounds about right, forcing people to pay then probably pocketing the cash.. I had a mini panic attack in Manila when I was there last, didn't have enough cash for the airport tax you pay upon leaving. Went to a cash machine and it rejected my ATM card straight away Thankfully it is just that one bank I have issues with and found another machine nearby..
Useful info, Aromulus. But that philtourism link just redirects me to OpenDNS (??) Is it still right, or do I need to try a different browser...?
It looks like it's a dead link now, I hate it when sites restructure with no regard or support for historic inward links. This looks like the same page as it has exact matches for the quote in Dom's original post but hopefully Dom will confirm. http://www.tieza.com.ph/pages-who-c...-rate-and-what-are-the-documents-required.php
Yup that is the one, but it has changed slightly........ Whereas before it was a total exemption, now they moved the goalposts a bit. One way or the other one ends up paying......
Travel Tax is also payable by permanent residents regardless of Visa type or frequency of travel out of the country; we are classed the same as Philippine nationals in that respect. None of the Philippine carriers include it in the ticket price even though PAL, being an IATA member, should but other airlines including KLM, SilkAir (Singapore Airlines), Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Delta, Continental, Qatar and Emirates generally do so automatically.
That link doesn't seem to want to play, either. I have suggested to K that she keep 5K in cash handy for travel tax x 2 (1,620 pesos each?) and terminal fee x 2 (550 pesos each).
This looks like the current version of the TIEZA website and the travel tax still seems to be Phs 1,620 per person, to be paid at the TIEZA counter: http://www.tieza.gov.ph/index.php/travel-tax On the other hand, the NAIA Terminal Fee of Phs 550 per person now seems to be included in the ticket price: https://www.cebupacificair.com/Pages/travel-advisory.aspx?id=63 Better safe than sorry and as she is leaving from T2, which does have a duty free shop, she can spend any spare pesos on a bottle of the rather good Don Papa Rum.
Travel Tax should already have been paid and its US Dollar amount (~$4.50 per pax) shown on the ticket's Fare Calculation as "PTT".
As you reported on this thread in 2012, foreign airlines do so; Philippines carriers do not. Just checked K's PAL ticket: it is not included, so no change there... (No, I don't know why this should be...) Correction: some people who are more astute than I am manage to spot the tick box on the PAL online form and pay it with the ticket - I missed this!
Does she have a connection, and if so where? It would be sad to hear that your bottle of Don Papa had been confiscated by airport security screening.
Thanks for the reminder. That was exactly what happened to the last bottle I bought in NAIA T2 - confiscated in HK! She is on PAL 720, non stop to London, so it will be a litre of Don Papa for both of us and 200 Marlboro red for her!
I wonder who drinks all the confiscated booze. Or does it all go back on the shelf in the duty free shop.
It goes off to the Fifth Dimension, along with the two Leatherman tools that I forgot to take off my belt in Heathrow and in Athens, the three kilos of white lead paste that Stansted took off my friend Martin Schulz on the grounds that it was "a liquid", various fruit cakes mistaken for Semtex in the USA, etc...
I think they only stock American manufactured Marlboro in the Duty Free shops as the domestic variety are not intended for export. The imported American ones are much, much more expensive. She'd be much better off buying a couple of reams at her local SM supermarket.
I wonder how much a pack of 20 ciggies costs in Blighty these days ? Could be a good incentive to quit
K says that she intends to try. 17 hours of enforced abstinence in airport terminals and in a plane should give her a "flying start", but whether a nicotine deprived K climbing up the walls is one that I can live with is something we will have to see...