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France plans to close tax loophole benefiting Airbnb
- throwaway2990 3y agoBan Airbnb. Terrible company with no ethics.
- eps 3y agoPrudent move, especially in a view of upcoming Olympic games in Paris.
- Spivak 3y agoIs it? I would let locals profit off the Olympics then institute the rule.
- pastor_bob 3y ago>Nearly 20% of people in the greater Paris region that do not already rent their home or part of it on AirBnB plan to do so during next year's Olympic Games in the French capital, according to a survey the platform commissioned from pollsters Ifop. Crazy stat. Greater than 1/5th of Parisians plans to rent out their places to tourists?
- taeric 3y agoDuring any big sports event, it is surprisingly common for locals to find ways to make money. For one where you have a lot of fairly well off people traveling into the place, renting out a room makes a ton of sense.
- systems_glitch 3y agoIndeed, folks in Blacksburg rent out their yards for football traffic parking :P
- pjc50 3y agoParisian homeowners. I wonder what fraction of them have a second home already. I'd say 10% is highly believable, Edinburgh achieves about that much during the Festival.
- justrealist 3y agoEven if you don't, you could take a vacation for a quarter of what you'd make from AirBnBing out your place. Kind of classic economics — some people care a LOT about the olympics, and will pay a lot to be there, so they should trade with the people who would rather be in Mallorca.
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI don't think that's crazy. I live in a small city that gets about 500k people for the first week of July. A lot of locals try to be out of town that week.
- tuetuopay 3y agoI live in Paris, and I plan to be as far away from the city during the Olympics. That'll just be a mess of a place given the state of disorganization Paris is in (and in true French fashion, it'll not be ready in time). Things like commute and just getting around will be a pain. Not to mention the crowds. So yeah, if I can rent my place to somebody during that time it'll be great. Making money is a bonus, but not a requirement. I can count on my fingers how many people I know that want to stay there during the event.
- sokoloff 3y agoI’d expect the figure to be higher. I didn’t want Boston to get the games, but if they did, I was 100% chance to rent our place out and get the hell out until it was over.
- systems_glitch 3y agoA good portion of them must have been doing it for a long time, last time we were in Paris (2005) there was no shortage of owned apartments for rent because the usual occupants were somewhere else for the summer. I don't think people were as likely to be buying properties for the explicit purpose of short-term renting (i.e. never intending to actually live there) back then, but I have no actual facts to back that up :P
- vidarh 3y agoThe Olympics falls right in the time period were Parisians flee Paris for summer vacations elsewhere, so it's perfectly timed for a lot of people to rent out their place.
- paxys 3y agoMakes sense. Get away from the chaos of the city and make a good amount of money to boot. At a smaller scale a lot of people I know do this in SF during large conferences (e.g. Dreamforce) and make upwards of $500/night, more than enough to cover a luxury vacation.
- vidarh 3y agoParis infamously "empties" of locals in August anyway, because it's hot and miserable and full of tourists, so given the Olympics will drive prices through the roof it seems believable that more people will leave and more of them will rent out their place.
- googlryas 3y agoEvery year, Paris and large parts of France empty out ~July 15-Aug 15, which overlaps nicely with the Olympics. A ton of French people, who would be going on vacation anyway, will have their vacation paid for by people coming in for the Olympics.
- golergka 3y agoAirbnb revolutionised people travel and live — personally, I've been living in airbnbs full-time for the last two years and loving it. I only had a bad experience once, and got reimbursed, with $400 bonus on top, 20 minutes after opening a support ticket. Honestly, I don't understand audacity of people who are trying to dictate to real estate owners what they can and can't do with their property, or people who think that a city or neighbourhood is "theirs" just because they happen to live there for a long time — without actually owning anything. While Airbnb violated local laws, I haven't seem them violating laws that I would ever consider moral or justified.
- wavefunction 3y agoYou can't even imagine buying a house in a neighborhood in your city and then having some dentist from Ohio buying the house next to yours and operating it as a 24/7 party house and you have the audacity to question the morality or justification of complainants? Forgive me if I write you off completely as a serious person.
- tru3_power 3y agoIf the party house isn’t causing a nuisance who cares? What people decide to do with their property should be their choice.
- wavefunction 3y agoDo you think I used the terminology "24/7 party house" to cover properties that are not a nuisance. You're on the list of unserious people as well now.
- Raudius 3y agoReal estate owners are already limited to what they can do with their property. How is regulating airbnbs any different from zoning laws?
- mantas 3y ago
- Danieru 3y ago8 paragraphs and not a single sentence to explain what the loophole is. For once reading the fine article has left me no wiser than the headline.
- gniv 3y agoHere it is, from a French article: > Les loueurs de meublés touristiques classés (de 1 à 5 étoiles), comme Airbnb, bénéficient aujourd’hui d’un abattement forfaitaire de 71 % jusqu’à 176 200 euros de recettes, contre 50 % pour les meublés classiques, et 30 % pour les locations vides dans la limite de 15 000 euros de loyers. Basically if they don't make a ton of money they can deduct 71% of gross revenue (otherwise they deduct expenses and depreciation, which is probably less than 50%). I suspect this was put in place way back to encourage gîtes (b&bs), which are popular in France.
- Veedrac 3y agoWhich raises the obvious point that a specifically carved out exception for a good on the basis of its assumed positive externalities is not a ‘loophole’. It is at most a subsidy. (Though, obviously, not enough of one. Land ownership should be taxed but land rental should be untaxed, as a quick glimpse at the market incentive structures will inform. Taxing revenue is insane.)
- maeln 3y agoI think it is a usual case of "This is why we can't have nice things". The "loophole" was created for a reason and then it got abused to a point of becoming its own issue.
- robertlagrant 3y agoWhen you write down rules by which you can take money for free from other people, any rule that means they don't have to give you money is, whether you call it a loophole or not, not a problem. Write your free money rules better.
- 3y ago