New York City/Paris, France – 12 April 2017 –
Airbnb has reached new deals with dozens of jurisdictions in the United States and France to collect and pay taxes, doubling down on its effort to improve its image with local policymakers even as it face regulatory challenges around the world, Reuters reported.
Airbnb, the short-term rental service that offers a website where homeowners can rent out a room or their entire property, as collected US$240 million in hotel and occupancy taxes since it was founded in 2008, remitting them to the jurisdictions where the company has agreements, Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas said.
The most recent tax agreements, formally announced by the company on Tuesday, came in eight US cities and counties, the state of Texas and 31 cities in France, making for a total of 275 agreements, Papas said.
The taxes, which Airbnb says are at the same rate paid by hotels, will be collected beginning May 1 for the newest agreements. More than half of Airbnb’s US listings are in communities where we the company collects and remits taxes, Papas said.
Chris Bryan, a spokesman for the Texas comptroller, said Airbnb approached Texas with the offer to pay taxes. “The state saw this as the most efficient way of bringing these people into tax compliance rather than going after thousands and thousands of homeowners,” he said.Texas is the 20th US state with which Airbnb has a deal. Seeking agreements with more states allows the company to avoid the thorny local politics in cities where it faces opposition.
It is still unclear how successful Airbnb will be in collecting and remitting all the taxes it had pledged because many of these agreements are less than a year old. Critics of the deals have questioned how local officials could have enough data on Airbnb hosts to verify how much tax the company ought to pay.