Airbnb gears up for fight with Palm Beach County over tax payments

Vacation rental companies such as Airbnb need to pay taxes like everyone else, Palm Beach County commissioners decided Tuesday, as they voted on a new law that requires owners to register their units and the booking services to collect tourist taxes.

The county has been battling Airbnb, HomeAway, Couchsurfing International and TripAdvisor for more than four years, accusing the companies of not paying the 6 percent tourism development tax required of hotels and any housing rented for less than six months. The commission will take a final vote on Oct. 16.

Tensions seethed during the commission meeting as Airbnb Florida public policy director Tom Martinelli called the proposed law a “shakedown-style ordinance” and said Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon has been “hostile to the industry in her public comments.”

In Florida, 39 of 63 counties, including Miami-Dade and Broward, have signed agreements with Airbnb to collect and pay tourism development taxes, according to the company. Palm Beach County is not one of those counties.

Airbnb has been paying sales tax revenue to the state since 2015. The company reported more than $45.7 million in tax revenue to Florida state and local governments in 2017, up from $20 million in 2016.

The service said it collected $3.3 million in taxes for Miami-Dade County and $1.87 million for Broward in 2017.

Under the Palm Beach County law, unit owners would have to register with the county and open a tourist development tax account, submit a monthly tax return and renew their registration each year. Failure to comply could result in penalties of $500 a day per unit. The hosting services, which would collect and forward the taxes to the county, would be required to stop listing units that are not properly registered.

Airbnb advertises more than 1,000 units in Palm Beach County and 40,000 across the state, Martinelli said. He said the typical host rents a listing in Palm Beach County for only three days a month.

“All of that is to say, they are not experts in local tourist tax law and should not have to turn to tax accountants to figure out short-term rental taxes,” he said.

Martinelli said the county should wait until a tax collection lawsuit, filed by Palm Beach County in 2014, is settled before passing the ordinance. He said the proposal would compel Airbnb to share private information about the units’ owners and renters, in violation of the federal Communications Decency and Stored Communications acts.

Gannon said the county tax office has tried to negotiate with the hosting platforms, to no avail.

“They’ve been ‘take it or leave it,’ ‘’ Gannon said. “They want to rewrite Florida law to their convenience.”

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