Airbnb Tax Information for Guests & Hosts Needs Overhaul - Inaccurate Information

[Brian1613]

Airbnb does not collect the County tax in Palm Beach County.  Hosts are responsible for the 6%. They have updated our county page to finally go to the link to get a county LBTR (Business Tax Receipt.) Thank  you.

To collect the 6%, they do not have, and need, a manual tax collection line in the system.  Without that, the only thing that you can do is add it manually at the “Community” line: https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Palm-Beach-County-Tourist-Development-Tax-TDT-Must-Be-Paid-...

Yet, when I go to my listing:

A) It tells the guests that you collect Florida and Palm Beach county tax. That is factually inaccurate.  So, when my guest reads our description, and we tell them that we collect the 6% to cover the tax we pay on their stay,  guests may just think that we’re lying to them, as they can see Airbnb say, right at the purchase point, that they collect the tax.  - THIS NEEDS TO BE REMOVED WHEN AIRBNB DOES NOT COLLECT THE TAX. 

B) I do not see my Community Fee come up.  Anyone at Airbnb who monitors these pages care to explain to us all where that Community Fee should be showing up, and why, if it’s ON, you aren’t sharing that line item with the guests?

Thank you,

[Brian1613]

As you can see here, when you click on the taxes, Airbnb shows you that they pay both Florida, and Palm Beach tax. Except, of course, that they don’t. They just collect the Florida part.  I just confirmed this on the phone with Airbnb support.

This is misleading. It’s actually, since it revolves around the collection of money, something that misrepresents what Airbnb does, to both guests, and hosts.

It should be removed.

It also means, for those of us who try to capture the TDT for Palm Beach County, via the Community Fee, that guests might wonder what we’re doing, since they see that Airbnb, here, says that they’re collecting tax from our guests. 

SUGGESTION: There are a lot of places where Airbnb does not collect the taxes. There needs to be a tax entry line, where the host can collect the taxes that are supposed to be paid by the guests. That money can be captured by Airbnb, posted to the host’s account, for their use in paying the County tax.

[Brenda328]

Unfortunately the Community Fee does not show up as a separate line item.  When you use the Community Fee option, it automatically increases your nightly rate - or at least that is what it did to mine.  So if my nightly rate was $100 and I entered a Community Fee of 6% to add the 6% county lodging tax, it now shows my nightly rate as $106.  And the Community Fee does not apply to your cleaning fee so you would need to manually increase your cleaning fee by 6% to include the amount of county lodging tax.  

So for those of us who are actually collecting the appropriate amount of taxes, we are once again at a disadvantage because there are many hosts who are blissfully unaware of these issues and are not collecting the additional tax amount so their listings are less expensive.  Ensuring the correct tax is collected has been additionally difficult as Airbnb has randomly applied the full amount of lodging tax on my property at times and then subsequently changed to only collecting the state portion without any notification to me whatsoever. 

At one point Airbnb also charged the county tax, but then included it in the host payment and the host was responsible for remitting that amount to the county.  And since lodging tax was calculated and collected at the time of the booking, depending on when the bookings were made various guests staying during the month might have been charged using any one of the above three methodologies making it even more difficult to correctly report and submit the amount of lodging tax owed to the county.

I refuse to send my guests an additional invoice for taxes after they book so I am forced to use the Community Fee method for now.  And to add insult to injury, you have to pay lodging tax on the full amount you collect so using this method you actually have to pay lodging tax on the lodging tax collected!

[Brian1613]

Yes. You will need the $6 to pay the county.  I checked with them again this week, and they confirmed that they DO NOT collect Palm Beach County tax, and remit it back to us.

I suggested that it would be a good idea to have a line item tax that they can collect in counties like ours, that can be remitted to the hosts for payment.