On May 18, I received an email saying that Airbnb will begin collecting and remitting taxes in South Carolina starting June 1, 2016. I was very excited! I currently pay a fee to MyLodgeTax (Avalara) to handle tax reporting/payment to all the various state and local entities, and would love for Airbnb to handle that (for free). HOWEVER, when I emailed MyLodgeTax to cancel their service, they told me that "Airbnb is actually only paying the taxes collected by the state of South Carolina, but there's a separate accommodations tax collected by/paid to Charleston County."
Is it true that Airbnb isn't handling ALL taxes? That would be really, really frustrating!!
As part of my contract with MyLodgeTax, they handle the following taxes, which add up to 13.5% total:
South Carolina Sales Tax 5.0%
South Carolina Accommodations Tax 2.0%
Charleston County Accommodations Tax 2.0%
Charleston County Local Option Tax 1.0%
Charleston County Education Tax 1.0%
Charleston County Transportation Tax 0.5%
North Charleston Accommodations Tax 2.0%
I would STRONGLY prefer for Airbnb to handle all these taxes; a "halfway" approach (only doing state-level taxes but not local) will just complicate things, and force me to keep using MyLodgeTax, or else do a lot more manual tax paperwork. Ugh. It would also mean that realistically, a lot of folks simply won't pay the local taxes that they owe. Double ugh. Please help out us SC hosts who want to do the right thing, Airbnb!