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@Forestsprite - I agree. I think most folks do not understand their 4th Amendment rights. We just had an incident in my Catskills town where a home and religious charitable organization had a grass fire and the next day the Town Code Enforcement Officer showed up and demanded entry into the property to inspect. He was turned away and told to come back with a warrant and rightly so. There’s a whole back story there that I won’t bore you with, but the home/church was within their rights. Know your rights!
EDIT: I don’t think this issue actually applies in the case you originally posted about, but in general I agree that folks need to better know what the Bill of Rights protects them from.
Yes, people may disagree on how the law applies to this particular case – and I think actually we wont’ know until the matter is tested in the courts. I’m interested to see what happens in Chicago because, if the case goes forward, it’s being tested there.
Well Cats there is the issue: individual rights vs. government, the bigger it is the more aggressive it becomes, and the more battles will arise. When the Bill of Rights were enacted, the Founding Fathers came up with them to combat the possibility of Big Government, which they also warned about repeatedly.
It has everything to do with it. Understand this, and I have said this before many times: the US Government is now a huge many-headed monster because of its size and the fact it is starving for money to pay for the over-spending of the last 4 decades. You ‘move’, if it makes you money, it is subject to tax. That is the consequence of a nearly 20-trillion national debt, half of it incurred in only the last 8 years.
You can retain your privacy in your home by ceasing to be an airbnb host. At least for a little while longer.
The so-called wars on drugs and terrorism have eviscerated the Bill of Rights. And now to think of this fearsome government power in the hands of someone who cares so little about any part of the Constitution (other than the 2nd Amendment)…it’s enough to keep one awake at night.
Agree tax has everything to do with it. No way the governments would be interested otherwise; note they’re not coming at it from a health and safety angle for example. It’s all about money and making sure everyone is putting what they should be into the pot.
Aye Zandra, btw is not the only country to find themselves in such a quandary, for human nature is similar in more than one place, that’s for sure.
K9: you make a great point! Sometimes to achieve one immediate goal, it could trample on other areas, establishing a dangerous new precedent in the long run.
Good conversation really. My central point is: beware of Government, all of them.
Addendum: for you older folks only, remember the song by Steppenwolf with the line: "There is a Monster on the Loose, and He Bares Watching’? Hope Jackie (@jaquo) sees this, she will remember it.
Actually it isn’t clear that tax has everything to do with the matter, at least in the instances (of which there are many but I don’t know if Chicago is one) where Airbnb actually collects and remits TOT for all hosts within a certain municipality. In such instances, the city is very readily able to collect its TOT (which is a larger amount than business tax…typically in the range of 5 to 15% of income, whereas business tax is generally on the order of 1% of income) because Airbnb collects it for them. For instance San Francisco has this arrangement. And Airbnb has been quite willing to enter into such tax collection agreements with any city that wants it to do that.
So then one may ask — if the city is already guaranteed its tax revenue, why does it still need the data? It’s not because of taxes – I think the more compelling issue for cities is in monitoring short term rentals to look for violations of rentals of entire homes/apartments (often cities limit the number of nights these can be rented, and limit such rentals to a hosts’ primary residence). And yes this is a real issue and difficulty – but – there are legal limitations cities have in their enforcement. What exactly those limits are I am not sure and I think these are and will be worked out in court, but I am interested because these issues touch on the larger matter of limitations of government and the privacy rights of individuals.
Yes of course they’re also looking for violations but the driver is all money, either in tax or huge fines ! Airbnb probably looks like a huge untapped gold mine for any cash strapped government. And trust me they will find a way to get access to this data, in my opinion reasonably so. In my opinion it’s reasonable for governments to want to monitor such significant economic activity.
Privacy laws are there to protect me from discrimination, unsolicited marketing and abuse of my personal data by unscrupulous companies. It’s not there to stop the government accessing data about how I’ve been earning money and how frequently.
At least in the case of San Francisco, the motivation certainly does not appear to be money. The city of San Francisco has plenty of money — it’s awash in money. But many on the Board of Supervisors in SF are very concerned about “taking units off the rental market” and their STR regulations and enforcment are oriented to that.
But I wouldn’t disagree that many cities would do whatever they can to tax and fine and penalize and tax and fine their residents, to fill the city coffers.
This isn’t what I’ve heard from local authority staff negotiating these agreements or AirBnB staff in SF. Implementing these collection procedures takes significant work from both sides; work AirBnB doesn’t always have the capacity to carry out in a timely manner.
The U.S. Government is very interested in information regardless of whether taxes are involved. I’m sure you’ve heard about the National Security Agency.
I would be impressed if you knew about the Bill or Rights or the US Constitution… Or the founding fathers, etc. But keeping in mind we wrote all these documents and fought for independence as a response to British tyranny! LOL.
