I outlined my journey to get all of this properly working under post entitled “US Citizen with Property in Mexico, Paying Mexican Taxes.” Sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to get a link to it. I could not see a way to log into Facturify or properly file taxes without an RFC. AirBnb support web pages state in order to gain access to Facturfy, you must upload your RFC tax certificate and then you will receive email instructions on how to access Facturify. I had to be relentless with AirBnb support for four days to enable the ability to upload the RFC certificate. Hopefully, my journey may provide some answers for you all somewhere along the way.
IMPORTANT - Just because you received a tax withholding certificate from VRBO,, if you don’t have an RFC, your taxes are not being properly reported to the Mexican tax authority. If you don’t have an RFC, VRBO is reporting those withholdings under a generic foreigner tax ID so that THEY remain in compliance with Mexican tax law, but you will not be in compliance. Under that scenario, VRBO expects that you will eventually retain an RFC so that your taxes can be properly reported.
AirBnb says that without an RFC certificate, they will withhold VAT and Income tax. Maybe they will do that if you are sending the money to a Mexican bank, but NOT if you are sending the money to the US. They don’t withhold a dime. After one reservation and I saw this was going on, I shut down my listing immediately. Yes, I lost five months of income doing an in-depth dive on this. Going to Mexico and doing what I had to do to get an RFC.
If you are not ready to deal with the complex issue of paying taxes in Mexico as a US citizen with the idea of renting it on AirBnb or VRBO, you should not be buying property in Mexico for this purpose. The Mexican government can seize your property and have started coming down on foreigners in some areas.
For those of you who have an RFC certificate and can’t get access to Facturify, I can tell you that AirBnb support are the only ones who can help you. Keep going to the “Help” link from your AirBnb host screen, go to the bottom and choose Contact Help. There, you will see all of your active support tickets. Don’t let them close the ticket until they resolve the problem. If they do close it, open another. Keep replying to the same response email every day until they resolve the problem, don’t let the support ticket stagnate. You will get your squeaky wheel greased.