Osceola County Tourist Development Tax

[Shirley414]

Not sure why Airbnb cannot collect County taxes.  Taxes collected are misleading.  The state collects 6% PLUS a discretionary tax depending on what county the property is located in.  My property is Osceola County which is 1.5% making total 7.5% for state.

Osceola County collects separate 6% tourist development tax.  The total tax should be 13.5%.  Airbnb advises that they collect 6% from the state plus 1.5% from the county which is inaccurate as the whole 7.5% is going to the state.  

Now I must ask every single customer for 6% additional tax which I think is ridiculous.

The first booking I received,  the guest thought it was a scam me asking them for money so I have to eat the 150 plus dollars since it was not mentioned in the description of the booking.

I had contacted Airbnb prior to my first reservation to advise them of the 13.5% it was never rectified.

[Elizabeth1814]

Hi Shirley, I am currently working on my tax return and was under the impression that Airbnb collected ALL taxes going by the wording on the website.

The agent who called me kept referring me to the website information, but I have turned to the community for help on this matter and found your post.

What would your advice be on going back to support on this matter as it should be made clear what taxes they add to the booking and what we the host have to submit.

Regards

Liz 

[Christian1193]

Hi Guys, I've been having the same issue with Airbnb and its been very frustrating to have to deal with them and the fact that their solutions to collecting the development taxes in Osceola is so archaic. The only solution offered is to have the guest pay when they check in or start up a resolution to collect this. Yo and everyone here doing this knows this is not an option. No one will be doing this for every single reservation. I found a work-around but we need to press Airbnb to allow us to "Add a Tax" like many of there documentation says we should be able to. It even goes as far as saying we can opt-out of having them remit those taxes and us putting in our own taxes to be collected and send to us (host) for us to remit the appropriate tax agencies on our own.

What I found is that if you have professional hosting tools you can add linen fee, community fee or resort fees to all you reservations. The problem is that these are only calculated towards the total number of nights reserved and you will always be short on money come tax time because those cleaning fees will add up very quickly. I found that since I have to pay development tax fees of 6% I have to charge 9% to be above the curve on each reservation then take out the 6% after the payout to pay these taxes. Now this is just a band-aid we should be able to have the correct amount of taxes charged in the occupancy and tax subject line and not jerry rigging the system to stay current on our taxes.

If we all pressure and call Airbnb with this issue and force them to allow us to "Add a Tax" to our reservations that will solve the problem once in for all.

Help me by calling and demanding to speak with a supervisor to scale-up this issue that at the end of the day is costing us thousands of dollars each year and taking up all the profits assumed by even doing this in the first place.

Thanks,

-Christian

[Bob250]

Vrbo does it automatically. Just like Airbnb, they charge the guest and remit the 7.5% to the state. But they also automatically charge the guest another 6% for the tourist tax and include it when they deposit everything into my account. I have to remit the tax myself, but still, Its very nice. 

I'm reluctant to remain on Airbnb just because of this accounting headache.

Bob

[MV-Marvil-LLC0]

Exactly same problem here. Who is going to happily accept to pay 6% after payment was done?

[Dan19807]

Oh my God. 
We've been SuperHosts with AirBnb for approx. over 1 year now.

We have a tax accountant that handles all our STR taxes.

Today, we received a tax collector notice for Osceola County about us needing to pay our missing "Tourist Development Tax". 

We're still waiting to speak to our accountant, but it definitely looks like both our Osceola County tax accountant and AirBnb did not collect or even advise about this needing to be collected. So now we have to come up with that out of pocket since we haven't been charging this tax to our guests for over a year?

Then I find this thread and I'm furious at AirBnb as well. Would someone from AirBnb please explain why this is a 4 year old thread asking for support on this issue and there have been no replies from a rep?

[Miguel-Alfonso1]

Is this still an issue on 2024? I'm starting a rental property in the area.

[Robbie149]

@Miguel-Alfonso1 Yes, this all still applies. But the original post has some of the taxes mixed up

-Sales & Use tax is 7.5% total in Osceola county; 6% is State of Florida, Osceola adds 1.5%

-Florida Transient Rental, or TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) is 6% for the State of Florida

-Osceola County charges an additional 6% for Tourist Development Taxes - This is where it looks like the issue is, because according to Airbnb, Osceola county is not listed as one of the 23  counties that require this tax to be collected and remitted to the State of Florida. 

Check out the link to the Airbnb help article below. We are local and manage some STRs in Osceola, reach out if you need help with anything - Theme Park Vacation Homes

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2301

[Ashley1941]

You can now add an additional tax on airbnb, its in your listing editor under taxes.