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All, I got an email from Airbnb and wondered about its legitimacy. Sure enough, it’s legit. This only affects U.S. hosts.
The email wanted me to click to add my social security number and of course I had to go look first by logging into the website. Go look in the Account > Payouts and you’ll see where they now have a form to add the info. UGH!!
Here’s the full email text.
Avoid tax withholding in 2022
We’re reaching out because of new federal legislation changes to tax reporting requirements that could impact your future payouts.
To avoid up to 30% of 2022 payouts being withheld and remitted to the IRS, we recommend you provide US taxpayer information for your Host account no later than Dec 1, 2021.
It should only take a few minutes to add it now.
What to do
Add taxpayer information for any individuals or entities who receive money from the account receiving this email. Your taxpayer information is usually your social security number or in some cases, your employer identification number (EIN). If there are two or more taxpayers, also follow these steps:
Why it’s required
To comply with the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, companies are required to collect taxpayer information in order to fulfill Form 1099 reporting requirements for the 2022 tax year. This is a federal legislation change affecting many US companies starting January 1, 2022. Taxpayer information from Form W-9 or W-8 is used to prepare 1099 or 1042-S for the 2022 tax year.
What to know
Your taxpayer info is required to prepare your tax form(s), and if you don’t provide it, here’s what could happen:
I just looked, I see a place to add a taxpayer but I did not get that email and do not see any of the stuff about withholding 30% or anything you copied and pasted above.
RR
Please re-read my post. You stated the same thing I did. @aelilya I went to the website because that’s what I always do…never click on emails I’m not expecting.
Gotcha. My bad. I’ll just delete that since it repetitious. Thanks!
Kind of interesting. After I deleted my redundant post, I went to my email and there was a survey from AirBnB about this. It presented me with a couple of differently worded versions of the email and asked me questions basically asking if I believed it was true, would I stop hosting with AirBnB as a result, etc. I did suggest they should consider how they were sending it out and how they were directing people to add the information because of it’s sensitivity; that hosts may find it suspicious.
:
Wow, that is interesting! What’s your perspective on supplying your personal info into the website?
I need to do some more research first. I don’t know if there’s been some policy change within AirBnB or with the US Feds. I thought the question about whether it would make me stop hosting with AirBnB to be odd if they have no control over the situation.
Frankly, I thought I’d already provided my tax payer info to them. I mean, how else could they have been reporting my taxes all this time?
This all feels a little odd; maybe not fraudulent, but I feel I’m missing information.
Yeah I have the same feeling. I know the legislation under discussion is far-reaching into every American’s tiny financial details IMO. But I never got a tax form from Airbnb, we did all our own tax reporting.
What changed this year for us, though, is Airbnb is paying my state and local taxes directly. So this feels more of a money grab to ease their reporting — if they are confident whose tax money they have they won’t hold back more. I really don’t know and hope other hosts can chime in.
Aelilya, I don’t understand how Airbnb pays the taxes they are withholding, could you fill me in? I am supposed to pay taxes quarterly on my Airbnb business but how do I know what to pay if they are paying them? Thanks
Vrbo deducts from my payout and I get a form at the end of March to give to my accountant.
Vrbo gives the funds to the IRS and it is deducted from what I have to pay at year end.
I was over the 20K threshold and they have never asked for Tax ID nor 1099’d me. Makes no difference to me though I have been filing taxes all along. I just do not want to get screwed by not doing it if I am not asked. I wil keep an eye on this…
RR
Yeah, me too for @RiverRock. I knew I didn’t bill enough each year to get a 1099 so I never expected it. This year Airbnb starting paying my taxes directly to state and local governments but from what I’ve read here on the forum before, it’s a huge lump sum and they don’t really know WHO it gets attached to. And therefore you need to ensure you are filing still on whatever schedule your state and local requires to declare the income, but just declare no money due.
But I could be all wrong and maybe this way it is much easier and cleaner. Airbnb never really supplies much help (gee, what a surprise) just an email and website message that said they are paying the taxes, and they gave me a line to include the percentage to collect. I preferred doing it myself as I knew it was paid, but like always, things change.
What’s still unclear to me under the guidance for Dec. 1 and beyond has to do with my husband and I filing jointly. The message about adding a second person is a bit unclear as to married, filing jointly. Anyone?
When I said taxes I only meant state and local SALES/TOURISM taxes. Never meant to imply income taxes. For state SALES taxes, I used to file monthly, but then got a letter that said for 2021 to file annually…given we closed and reported zero $$ for months, they put us in another category. When we get busy again, we’ll go back to monthly I expect. (this is Georgia.)
For local, I filled out a paper and took to the tax office each month with a check. Still filing the paper but noting that Airbnb has remitted the amount…just to be sure there is a paper trail.
Hosts in the U.S. may have been getting 1099s in prior years because of various individual state thresholds that were lower than the federal threshold.
The federal lower threshold, from $20,000 and 200 transactions to $600 with any transaction number, goes into effect for transactions settled after December 31. 2021.
You know what’s nuts??? I have never had a single transaction over $600…yet here we are…
Thank you for the additional info @JJD
Refers to the aggregate amount, $600 or more in total for the year.
Okay, for all you accountants…I’m on the AirBnB website page to input information and this is greek to me:
Exemption from FATCA reporting code (if any)
Exempt payee code (if any)
I expect N/A applies to us, but I don’t really know.
Good one. I should have googled:
The “Exempt payee code” space is for an entity that is a U.S. exempt . payee . The “Exemption from FATCA reporting code” space is for a payee that is exempt from reporting. required by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
