U.S. Hosts - Airbnb requires taxpayer information. Submit your info to keep hosting

[Airbnb]

[Updated December 16, 2021]

If you have an active US listing, an active US payout method, or have a US country of residence according to our records, changes to IRS rules may affect your tax filing next year.

To ensure we receive this information, if you don’t provide it:

• We have begun pausing payouts and will also be blocking calendars from future reservations until we receive this information.
• You may also experience up to 30%* tax withholdings on your 2022 payouts.

*Exact tax withholding percentage will vary based on your tax situation.

Up until now, we have only issued 1099 forms to Hosts who had earnings of over $20,000 per year and 200 bookings or actions. Starting January 1, 2022, the American Rescue Plan Act will require Airbnb to issue a 1099 form for all Hosts with annual earnings of $600 or more.

Learn more in the Resource Center.  

We have also started compiling answers to your most common US tax questions, and will continue updating as we hear more. What questions do you have about these upcoming US tax changes?

[Bob53]

Why, as a non-US resident with no link to the US and no US assets should a UK resident submit a tax form to the IRS in America?  Why does Airbnb not listen to requests to stop constant hounding by Airbnb on this?  How do I get out of this nonsense?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Bob53 The post above says 'We strongly recommend that all Hosts who file taxes in the U.S. provide taxpayer information to Airbnb by December 1, 2021.'

So this doesn't apply to you. Are you being 'hounded' elsewhere?

[Bob53]

Yes. By Airbnb. Despite the fact that I have never filed a US tax return. The Airbnb support did not read my messages or listen to what I said.  They also closed discussions despite me saying that I needed more help.  I also read that the same thing happened some time ago when they withheld tax from earnings for non-us tax payers, (Mexicans), paid it to the IRS and then declined to reimburse the money wrongly taken. Airbnb just does what it wants and has no accountability for its mistakes. Hosts are not treated well and the support team are useless. 

[Jenny838]

Why wouldn’t Air be able to send a complete tax form for this site? It should be as simple as showing payout and withheld. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Jenny838 Presumably Airbnb need your tax information in order to provide a complete form. Otherwise the payout/witheld could apply to anyone.

[Mark116]

I thought the $600 threshold didn't make it into the final legislation, but maybe I am mistaken. 

Also, Airbnb already has the tax information for US citizens unless the listing is done under an LLC or other corporate entity.

I must be missing something.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Mark116 Perhaps hosts who have hosted for a long time haven't provided all the necessary information?

[Mark116]

@Mike-And-Jane0  All it's asking for is name, SS# and address.  All things that it already has for U.S. tax purposes so it seems redundant unless the 'host' is a corporation not an individual.

[Bob53]

But if you live in the U.K., have no link with the US in any way, have never had any dealings in the US, why should I need to complete a US tax form?  Would you comply if the U.K. government demanded that you submitted a UK tax form?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Scott Is there a chance your Airbnb program thinks @Bob53 lives in New Jersey rather than the Jersey in the UK?

[Thomas2025]

We are a property management company with several different units that belong to several different owners/businesses. All the income is deposited into our Escrow account and is distributed to the individual owners on a monthly basis. We 1099 our owners ourselves.

We are trying to figure out how this works with this new AirBNB requirement.

There is no option available  to enter multiple Tax EINs, which is not ideal any way.

How are we able to voluntarily exclude ourselves from this policy and not have the 30% taken from the income?  

[Moira135]

Did you ever get this issue resolved? I am currently listing my first property on AirBnB as a property manager. The home is owned by an LLC  that I am not a part of. In the future, I hope to host for other LLCs or homeowners as well. I am not sure if I should use the LLC tax info or my own.  If I use my own, how will that negatively impact me.  I had been planning to have AirBnb deposit money into my account and I would distribute the profits monthly.  I don't want the IRS to think that all the money coming out of AirBnB is my income as I will only be taking a percentage.  Can you advise at all?

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Thomas2025 I very much doubt you can exclude yourself from this policy as it is driven by your governments requirements. Presumably if you provide your company info to Airbnb and then they report this income to the IRS your accounts to the IRS will show a large income but an equally large (minus commission) cost as you pay the money to your owners. I assume the new law requires you to inform the IRS of payments made to your owners hence the 1099s you give to the owners.

[Rick4146]

I have receiving regular phone calls from AirBnB telling me that I need to update my taxpayer information or hosting will be suspended.  I updated the information in December and have received two calls since then.  Also, I've noticed there have been no requests for bookings in the last three weeks.  Has my account been suspended or is no one interested in my property now?  How can I fix this?

[Robert-and-Janette0]

Did you resolve this?

I'm curious because I am having some similar issues with Airbnb. They are withholding our payouts and threatening to block our bookings. 
I have been unable to submit our tax information. Once I fill out the form and try to submit ... it's greyed out and not allowing me to submit. I have called them and email to no avail. Very frustrating since it seems there's no way to contact directing a senior advisor. 

[Emilie]

Hey @Robert-and-Janette0, 

I'm sorry to hear you've been unable to submit your tax information, nor to get answers on how to proceed so far. I'd like to flag this on my end and see if I can obtain any more info for you, but I'd need a few more details first if that's ok.

• Normally when a button remains greyed out, it means some fields aren't completed yet - could you check that's not the case here please?
• Are you trying to fill in this info from a browser, and if so have you tried another browser and/or to delete your cache and cookies? 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Emilie

[Robert-and-Janette0]

Yes I did look MANY times to see if something wasn't filled out or if something showed up with a red note. 
nothing like that.

We have tried from our phones or the laptop and I'm sure it has nothing to do with with one since I have been conducting business and send other types of forms out recently. The bigger issue is that there's no senior person who can really help and keep our account from being blocked.

I'm honestly thinking now about vrbo or booking.com because we cannot afford to have our calendars blocked. We have five units and depend on this income. 

[Robert-and-Janette0]

Emilie,

I do very much appreciate your concern. I would like to know if we could possibly copy the form, fill it out freehand and email it to someone of superiority in the tax department??

Also fyi. We did have our tax information formerly with Airbnb. It was suggested to me by one Airbnb agent that we delete those and just start a new one which is what I've been doing. And there are some changes in what was previously recorded. The name is different, and the LLC is in a different category than previously recorded. So I also wonder if that may have something to do with why it don't allow me to submit the information. The EIN remains the same. And since it is an LLC and has its own tax return I have tried putting the name under the legal name but also I have tried using my name or my husbands name ( partners of the LLC) or both of our names... to no avail. 

[Emilie]

@Robert-and-Janette0 I understand, this must be frustrating. Unfortunately I'm not part of Customer Service nor can I point you to another route than the one you've tried. That being said, I'll try to raise this issue on my end and see if I can get more info for you!

[Robert-and-Janette0]

If ANY of you are having trouble submitting your TAX information.... I just found out from Emilie ( online community support) that when I put the date in, it must have dashes in between the numbers and not a forward slash.  So it should be like this 03-25-2022

normally if you are filling out a form for someone ( not Airbnb) something red would show up where you made an error and you would be able

to troubleshoot to fix it. But since I didn't know what it was.... I was assuming it had to do with how we put our name in, or the name of our company, or the type of LLC we file. Because all of those things I had changed since the year before. But it only had to do with the simple date and dashes. 
I'm great full that I had written in on the community page and someone from Airbnb was watching. Because I had made numerous phone calls, received phone calls from Airbnb, and email messaging to no avail. My payouts were already being held back from Airbnb and we were constantly getting threats from Airbnb saying our calendar would soon be blocked if we did not submit this form. Yet no one had any suggestions on how this could be fixed. No one was accountable. Everyone said they could not help and they could not get a supervisor on the phone for me. There was no cohesiveness at all. 
So remember the dashes and remember that writing into the community seems to be your best bet!