Just venting, this is driving me nuts!

41

I would suggest going to Booking.com, entering in your city, enter some dates, and then select a hotel that is close to your rental.

You will see in Athens GA hotels are collecting:

7% Sales tax
7% Hotel -Motel tax
$5 Nightly rate tax

So even if you don’t qualify as a “hotel” to collect occupancy tax, you need to be sure you are also exempt from collecting sales tax.

Here is an article from last year discussing the new $5 tax, and it mentions sales tax. In the end they may have decided to only implement the $5 tax on hotels, as the article was written last year.

If it were me, I would be calling and specifically asking if I am required to collect and remit sales tax.

1 Like
42

Geoff, I live in Ga too. I called the Ga dept of revenue. Basically for the state, you have to get a sales tax number from the Georgia Department of revenue. There are videos online to show you how to do this. You have to report each month whether or not you rented and remit the tax. Basically for the state, you have to remit sales tax only if you are not providing food. If you are providing food, then you have to deal with hotel/bnb taxes.
You’ll need to check with Athen yourself to determine if they require a business license and you to remit any other taxes specific to that county/city.
Ga says basically if you’re selling anything, you must remit sales tax for it.