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Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be simple fo

by yladiz 10y ago

Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be simple for Airbnb to see a person having multiple properties within this district/city and not allow it if it's against the law, or limit the number of days a person can rent a properly out. However, Airbnb doesn't seem to do this. Airbnb is a great platform, which I've used both domestically (in USA) and internationally, and I really appreciate what it offers. What I don't understand is the flaunting of laws by saying it's not their problem, that they shouldn't police their users and that their users are responsible for what they do. I can understand the argument, but it's not difficult to handle these cases and Airbnb should really do more (arguably their due diligence) to handle them.

15thandwhatever 10y ago
At first, I think this would be just as complicated to enforce as US municipality taxes. There are several taxes to be levied within a given state, with the rates changing based on county/city borders (see New York), regional cooperatives that span multiple towns but not the entire county (see Illinois), multiple taxing districts within a town (see Connecticut). That doesn't even get into the fact of taxes that are levied just for your industry (see the extra taxes on your car rental bill for picking up at the airport, or Arizona's former shared rental facility recovery fee for recouping the cost of building a new rental car facility). This was Amazon's argument against collecting state sales tax. But taking on the opposite view for a second, and siding with you... While it's complicated, all the incumbents in the hotel, rental car, and taxi industry that we're trying to displace for "not being agile enough", have spent the necessary man-hours to build the necessary components into their system to identify a taxable situation and properly deduct and remit taxes. They've hired own in-house staff and relied on external accounting firms to do their due diligence of regulatory matters (even to the extent of arguing against particular new taxes or tax increases). Hertz, Hilton, and Greyhound all operate within these "heavily taxed" confines (in terms of effort, not absolute dollars), and communities/states have gotten used to their compliance, which in turn funds the various operating coffers of a municipality/region/state. So yeah, why not expect the same from Airbnb?

by yladiz 10y ago

15thandwhatever 10y ago

At first, I think this would be just as complicated to enforce as US municipality taxes. There are several taxes to be levied within a given state, with the rates changing based on county/city borders (see New York), regional cooperatives that span multiple towns but not the entire county (see Illinois), multiple taxing districts within a town (see Connecticut). That doesn't even get into the fact of taxes that are levied just for your industry (see the extra taxes on your car rental bill for picking up at the airport, or Arizona's former shared rental facility recovery fee for recouping the cost of building a new rental car facility). This was Amazon's argument against collecting state sales tax. But taking on the opposite view for a second, and siding with you... While it's complicated, all the incumbents in the hotel, rental car, and taxi industry that we're trying to displace for "not being agile enough", have spent the necessary man-hours to build the necessary components into their system to identify a taxable situation and properly deduct and remit taxes. They've hired own in-house staff and relied on external accounting firms to do their due diligence of regulatory matters (even to the extent of arguing against particular new taxes or tax increases). Hertz, Hilton, and Greyhound all operate within these "heavily taxed" confines (in terms of effort, not absolute dollars), and communities/states have gotten used to their compliance, which in turn funds the various operating coffers of a municipality/region/state. So yeah, why not expect the same from Airbnb?