AirBnB starts to collect taxes in France, total chaos and puts responsibility on hosts... so hosts are dropping AirBnB

Regulations/Tax Issues
1

AirBnB decides to start collecting occupation/tourist tax for all hosts.

France has a fairly good system for hosts, because STR has been there long before AirBnB.
The system is quite complex with different levels of taxes based on type of rental. Also in most instances only adults pay tax.

Now AirBnB has decided to collect taxes for all hosts, for all guests (all ages) but at the lowest rates.
In the end the host is responsible for the correct charges to the guest and payment to the gouvernment.
So they have to pay out guests for kids, and collect the difference if AirBnB’s rates are too low.

Imagine the chaos.So a lot of french hosts are now dropping AirBnB, afraid of the administrative chaos and penalties.

There are much better systems to think of, but AirBnB is panicking and doing stupid things.
It seems to me that the golden age of AirBnB is coming to an end, they managed to grow abusing the system and lack of rules. But now the system is catching up on AirBnB but they do not know to handle it.

1 Like
2

I see it differently. Collecting taxes makes it not only legitimate but also probably impossible to ‘outlaw’ since municipalities will receive money which is usually hard to resist.

Perhaps it will adjust so that it covers all of the tax needs (if you all lobby for it) but it is always a good thing when something becomes legitimate

2 Likes
3

I think most other booking systems do not do this, they do allow Hosts to specify the taxes that apply and like any other business they are remitted to the appropriate authorities.

Fortunately my taxes are simple and are collected for the one entity I have to deal with, others in my State are not so lucky, AirBnb collect some but not all.

4

There is nothing wrong with collecting taxes.

The problem is that AirBnB like always ignores all existing systems and forces its own thing on hosts on and guests but taking no responsibility. Because AirBnB has no clue on what they are doing, and think they invented STR.

It would have been a lot better if AirBnB would create the possibility to enter your business or tax number in your profile and opt out of the automatic tax system.

Now a lot of good hosts are punished for the few bad ones.

5

I don’t think they can do it without government approval!