Occupancy Taxes

[Kristi1556]

HI! I'm a new host in Solana Beach, CA. There is an Occupancy Tax but Airbnb doesn't collect and pay it. We do not have a business tax id since we are individuals listing our property, a condo near the beach that we're excited to share with guests. 

Why doesn't Airbnb have a easy way for us to transparently collect the occupancy tax, even if it's up to us to pay it ourselves? After a lot of digging, the only way to request and collect the tax is by using the resolution center to request payment after the booking has been made. This seems like bad Airbnb customer service to the "renters" and forces us to provide bad customer service to our "renters" since we have to approach them after the fact. I added a "house rule" to the listing warning potential renters that this additional charge would be coming, but I doubt most people will see this before they book. 

So - why doesn't Airbnb provide a line item request for individual owner/renters to request and explain the occupancy tax? 

Secondly, I've put in requests to two new renters and I have no idea where to track the request nor know where the renter receives the request to approve and pay?  I've spent hours trying to figure out the most efficient and transparent way to handle this and am begging for some more specific help from Airbnb on this. I reached out to other renters in the same situation and most have just abandoned the practice of collecting which only sets them for trouble. This feels solvable on Airbnb's part?

Thank you for any guidance! 

[Elaine701]

@Kristi1556 

You can't do it from within the app. You can only do it through the www interface. 

www.airbnb.com.

login and switch to hosting. 

Go to listings, and choose your listing

Click on pricing and availability

Scroll down to taxes, click on it. 

Enter the amount of tax you need to collect. 

That's it. Now every guest will pay that amount per person per night (paid to you, not the government). 

Unfortunately, there's no flexibility. For example, our tourist tax varies by season. There's no way to change that by season. So, we have 2 listings... one for high season and one for the rest of the year. 

😎

[Karol22]

Hi @Kristi1556 , within the Airbnb website, you can go to your listing and set up custom taxes. This is now under the pricing section of the listing. You can set any percentage and give the tax a name. For all reservations thereafter, Airbnb will payout an added occupancy tax in a separate transaction, which you will then collect and remit to your local tax authority directly. All custom taxes are charged in addition to the reservation and will solve what you're looking for.