City Taxes

[Mark4131]

Good Morning

The city which I have my Air BnB keeps having me itemize the taxes that they get from Air BnB. They claim that Air BnB does not show what property the taxes come from when they get to the city offices. They say it comes in one giant sum and they want us as homeowners to provide the individual rentals and how much taxes the stays collect individually. IS this true? Does Air BnB send it without explanation of where the tax money is coming from? I find this very hard to believe and would like some confirmation from Air BnB so I can tell my city office to shove it.

Thank you,

Mark

**[Name hidden due to privacy concerns - Community Center Guidelines]

[Ann72]

@Mark4131   I’ve read posts here saying that’s exactly what Airbnb does. We hosts don’t even see the occupancy taxes on our reports, so if I were you I’d just download the CSV file of last year’s transactions and hand it to the city to sort out.  Meanwhile, the IRS has a new ruling that they don’t want details for fewer than 200 transactions from Airbnb, Venmo, PayPal, etc., so maybe your city should take note, stop nitpicking, take the money and run.  

[Mark116]

@Ann72 @Mark4131  Our city won't do it, if they don't like what they get from Airbnb they simply make you pay the tax directly to them, whether it has been collected and remitted already or not.

[Ann72]

That’s so annoying @Mark116!  How do you handle that?  Have you been lucky so far or have they rejected what you’ve given them?

[Mark116]

@Ann72 Our city is convinced, I have no idea rightly or wrongly, that Airbnb is collecting their 6% occupancy tax but not paying it to them.  We tried to get a straight answer from Airbnb when our permit renewal came up, but we got nothing useful let alone conclusive.  Since the city wouldn't renew w/out the tax being paid, and insisted it had not yet been paid, we paid it.  The city did suggest that we consider suing Airbnb for the tax $$, but we have not done that since we're still hoping it may get resolved one way or the other without the need for us to go to court as individuals.

@Mark4131  PS...you can go into the transaction history and there is a way to print out the total tax collected for every reservation, but it may not be broken out into individual taxes.  This is what we sent to our city gov. and they were okay with it.

[Mark4131]

A friend of mine who has an Air BnB got an answer from our state's department of Revenue that I forwarded to our city since I posted my original thread.

We (the "Landlord" of the Vacation Rental) are NOT renting rooms to anyone. AirBnB and VRBO are performing the "Sale" and thus they pay the Sales Tax and Room Tax under their respective Tax ID numbers.

We are simply 1099 contractors providing a service for which we are compensated. We have rented nothing and thus pay no Sales & Use or Room Tax.

We are only responsible for the 1099 Income we make to the State and the Feds.