Jersey City asking to pay accommodation tax before renewing STRP?

[Willis8]

The Jersey City Department of Housing Preservation wants me to pay JC accommodation tax on my Airbnb bookings before they'll renew my my short-term rental permit.

However, the accommodation tax is collected and remitted by Airbnb. The accommodation tax ordinance states that the person charging the occupancy fee (Airbnb in this case) is responsible for collecting and remitting the tax, and Airbnb says that they do that:

Has anyone else gone through the permit renewal process? How did you handle it?

Thanks,

Willis

[Sammi7]

did you get any update from airbnb on this? I am facing the same problem on renewal now and it doesn't seem like airbnb had send the city any tax money that they collected on behalf us. 

[Prakash63]

Any update on this @Sammi7 ? Do we have to pay the 6% during the renewal eventhough Airbnb collects 6%?

[Danielle717]

Hi! I am having the same problem. Did you get any resolution from airbnb? @Willis8 @Sammi7 

[Sammi7]

@Danielle717 no answer from Airbnb at all, as I've been following up everyday. And the city still holding up issuing the renewal. Quite frustrated. 

[Mark116]

@Sammi7  We paid the occupancy tax since we could not get anything firm from Airbnb other than cuts and pastes to language that was not precise, e.g. no way to prove the tax had been collected.  

The city told us we should consider suing Airbnb in small claims court, but we haven't made any moves on that yet.

[Sammi7]

@Mark116 Thank you, I found an Airbnb group that is currently emailing with Airbnb now about this matter, Apparently there are a lot more hosts being effected than just us. It's a lot of money to pay up front from my end so I don't want to pay from my pocket first. Have you successfully gotten any reimbursement from Airbnb?

[Mark116]

@Sammi7  No, we didn't even try, when we couldn't get a straight answer after calling, emailing and messaging them, to get some evidence to give to the city, we paid the tax in order to get the permit renewal, we figured it would be hopeless to continue.

My guess is that no one will get a straight answer from Airbnb voluntarily until there is a court filing.  Yes, as far as I know it is all Jersey City hosts last year who are having to pay the occupancy tax that everyone thought Airbnb was collecting and paying.  We waited about a week in hopes that we'd get something from Airbnb but we didn't want to cancel our fall reservations or become 'illegal' so we felt there was no alternative but to pay the tax.

[Sammi7]

@Mark116 Thank you for sharing your experiences with this issue, you are right, Airbnb just no really responding much, when they do, it was just very vague answers. It's an unfortunate situation...

[Jennie181]

We also had no choice but to sign a document that states that if AirBnB doesn't pay the occupancy tax, that we host will be responsible.  We had no choice to sign since we wanted to continue with our AirBnB.  Its actually still profitable to sign then to rent our our listing to a tenant that will occupy your listing everyday.  How sad it is to have to pay when we host work so hard to make make a living.