German city to tax prostitutes through roadside vending machines

Germany's former capital Bonn will now tax prostitutes, it was reported in London.

Prostitutes working the streets of Bonn will have to buy tickets from roadside vending machines that once dispensed tickets to the city's motorists. A night's ticket will set a prostitute back 5.30 pounds, irrespective of the number of clients they have, The Telegraph said.

Like parking meters, the machines also tell users the time of day when a ticket is necessary: in this case between the hours of 8.15pm and 6am, Monday to Sunday.

The ticket machines would bring street prostitutes into fiscal line with their peers in registered sex establishments, the newspaper quoted Monika Frombgen, a spokeswoman for Bonn city council, as saying.

"This is an act of tax fairness," she said. "Prostitutes in fixed establishments such as brothels and sauna clubs already pay tax."

She added with many foreign-born street prostitutes, previous attempts to tax them floundered on a widespread inability to comprehend a German income tax form.

The machines, Bonn hopes, will provide an easy-to-understand system of taxation, the newspaper added.

This is the first time tax tickets have been sold on the streets in Germany, it said.