AirBnB didn't collect occupancy tax and now I'm getting no where

David-and-Trang0
Level 2
San Rafael, CA

AirBnB didn't collect occupancy tax and now I'm getting no where

AirBnB has a voluntary agreement with my taxing jurisdiction to collect 10% occupancy tax on all reservations. 

 

They have been doing this since late last year. I can see the taxes they collect from the guests under the Gross Earnings. 

 

This most recent guest originally booked my apartment for 2 weeks. After he checked in he decided he wanted to stay for 32 days. All fine and dandy and now that the stay is over 30 nights occupancy tax goes to $0. 24 days into the stay he tells me he's is leaving 4 days early for a total of 28 days. I told him he needs to tell AirBnB that he is leaving. He tells me via text that he will only do this if I agree to give him a refund for those 4 days. I told him that he didn't leave me a lot of time to find someone else. That was the end of that conversation. Next thing I know AirBnb makes the decision to refund him this amount because he showed proof that a family member had died (an Aunt to be exact) so they went ahead and in the back end modified the reservation. But now that the reservation was only 28 days occupancy tax is owed and sure enough when I checked the gross earnings report it showed $0 collected for occupancy tax. So whoever backend changed my reservation didn't add in the occupancy tax or there's a glitch in their system. I am required by my county to file a monthly tax return attaching a printout of those gross earnings report and wherever occupancy tax was not paid... you guessed it.. I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT.  It's only ~$250 but this is outrageous. As you can guess after countless emails of non-sense boiler plate responses and multiple "escalations" with the same boiler plate responses such as emailing me "What are occupancy taxes?" and "Please consult your tax professional" I am starting to looking into arbitration. Sure the $ is peanuts but the time I have spent emailing these people back and forth and receiving mindless responses I am starting to think this is more than incompetent case managers and this is by design to defraud hosts of mistakes AirBnB makes. I am a superhost but based on the countless threads here on other SuperHosts not being reimbursed for $8000+ in damages I am thinking I learned my lesson cheaply that AirBnB cares about their SuperHosts as far as they can throw them. 

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