City ordinance taxes

[Lawrence222]

Received a notice that city of round rock, tx had used an analytics firm to discover “hotels” operating in the city. I was unaware Airbnb qualifies as a hotel. I promptly paid the 9% I owed the city. I was terribly disappointed in AirBNB. The company should (for all the fees it charges) have notified me of local city ordinances and added those taxes to my Airbnb stays. Tired of companies getting away with misinformation and then passing responsibility on to those they charge. All the fees only to colllect for simple calendaring is scam-like.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Lawrence222 Would you like Airbnb to also explain how much income tax you owe? It would be near impossible for Airbnb to keep up with all local taxes in all of its markets worldwide. There must be thousands in the US alone. 

Oh and if you think it collects it's fee only for calendaring then I think you might be surprised to know they also have a fairly large marketing budget to bring people to your rental. Try going it alone and you will soon find out how hard it is.

[Lawrence222]

Not worth 3% of all rentals. No it's not hard to rent a property instead of doing AirBNB. And the only marketing they do is for themselves as a whole. 3% that's not worth it. Yes, I expect a company that represents itself to data warehouse all the local ordinances instead of pushing that off to home owners. It's not that hard to allocate one person to go through and examine each city they have listings in and allocate the proper taxes, there are tons of global businesses that do that regularly. 3% for what they offer is a scam, you may not recognize that, but I certainly do now.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Lawrence222 Oh dear, if you think 3% is high the actual figure they get per booking is 14.2% on top of the 3%. This is still competitive with other providers.

I am also not sure you understand how many city tax rates there are and rules over the USA let alone the whole world.

[Lawrence222]

Apparently you've never heard of crowdsourcing. And if you don't think AirBNB has the data and can let people know based on the local configurations that they have in the platform, you are mistaken.

[Helen3]

I'm a little confused by your post @Lawrence222 . When you set up an STR business it's your responsibility to do your market research to understand what taxes you may be liable for and any STR restrictions.

Airbnb is a listing company that charges you 3% to give you global access to millions of guests, provides you with a platform for managing your booking, has a guarantee in case of guest damage and T&C for managing bookings. 

it's not up to a listing marketing platform to advise you of your city oridinances or your taxes - that's your job as the business owner. 

[Lawrence222]

3% for a listing platform isn't worth it.

[Helen3]

Not worth it based on what premise @Lawrence222 ?

You've been hosting via Airbnb successfully for over three years so it would be strange to suddenly stop using them because you didn't check out the local tax liability for your STR business .

You've already deleted your STR business from Airbnb so it seems there is something else at play here. 

[Ana2038]

@Lawrence222 , as @Helen3 , stated, local ordinance, rules and regulations, taxes etc…are your responsibilities not Airbnb. It’s important and wise to be familiar with your city/community guidelines as it pertains to STRs. Are they allowed, does the city collect TOT (transient occupancy tax-similar to what hotels pay). By now you’ve figured out then city is going to want their share so now you need to figure out how to collect the taxes moving forward. Do you add this to other fees, or pay for them out of your own pocket? 

Not all cities collect TOTs but many are moving in that direction as another source of revenue for their coffers….

Best of luck