I am a calm and rational guy, but I am absolutely frustrated beyond belief with AirBnb's inability to answer a simple question.
Each quarter, we are required to pay 5% occupancy tax (based on gross receipts) to our county tax office. In the past, this 5% was collected and paid to us at booking, based on our request to withhold that 5%. Starting on October 1, however, AirBnb started withholding both county occupancy tax and Virginia sales tax, and then remitting the taxes on our behalf.
We still have to file the form each quarter at our county tax office and pay the 5%, but we get credit for what AirBnb submits for us. (We need to pay the 5% for non AirBnb bookings ourselves.) Our local tax office requires proof of what AirBnb submitted, but I didn't think this would be a problem, because on our downloaded transactions page, we can see the total tax withheld each booking.
However .... AirBnb does not break down the taxes paid to each entity, so I don't know how much of the tax they paid our county and how much went to the state. After numerous phone calls and even more emails, I still cannot get the answer to this question. It even got escalated to a team that does such things, and their final response is that they just don't know and say there is no one else to ask. How can this be? Someone has to program their software to know how much to charge our guests at booking! Why can't they just look that up? Someone has to pay the check to our county. Why can't they just look that up?
EVERY SINGLE TIME I ASK, I get put on hold while they "do the research", only to come back and tell me that Virginia policy for occupancy tax for counties says the rate is somewhere between 3 and 7 percent and that state sales tax is in some other range. They also always tell me to look at the transaction page to see how much was withheld. But they can't tell me what the occupancy tax rate is for MY county and they can't tell me our state sales tax rate. And they can't tell me how much they actually paid in dollars to each of those two entities.
I tell them that I know the rates. They are 5% for the county occupancy tax and 5.3%. However, they are withholding about 12%, which is too much. Where is that extra tax money going?
I've literally spent hours trying to get this information. I finally got the bright idea to just ask my county tax office how much was remitted on my behalf. I couldn't believe it when they said they had no idea. They said that they get one check monthly from AirBnb which is the total tax collected for all AirBnb hosts in our county, but they don't know how much is collected for each individual host! This is why they want us to submit proof on what was submitted on our behalf. Our county office is just as frustrated as I am.
Everyone at AirBnb has been friendly and says they understand my frustration. In the end, though, the final response is always the same: "I don't know." No one on the phone can talk about it now, either, because it has been put into escalation. But the escalation group only conducts its discussion via email, which is very slow, and still ends with "We don't know."
I'd be happy for a suggestion on what to do so I can (1) comply with my county tax laws and (2) know why they are charging too much tax for my guests.