Vacation Rental & Taxes: You Should Care About CA Vs AirBnb!

[Shane Pearlman]

Recently, a bill was introduced by the California State Senate that would require Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO and other short-term rental platforms to share rental data with local governments. Why does that matter? In Santa Cruz county, there is an 11% short term occupancy tax that a number of people have been bypassing when they went a room in their home for a week. Now they would have the data to hunt you down. =)

If you happen to be in the vacation rental business and this affects you (ahem @J. Martin etc), you might want to check it out and email your rep or at least prepare for the impact.

The legislation will be heard by the Senate Governance and Finance Committee on Wednesday, May 6th and the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, May 12th.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/sen/sb_05...

[Karen Margrave]

I can understand people not wanting to have to pay the tax. However; hotels have to pay it, therefore; why should private homes be exempt. The problem with trying to get around it is that local governments will pass ordinances that prohibit vacation rentals in their cities because they undercut the tax base. Sometimes you just have to pay to play! Hotels are putting a lot of pressure on local governments over this, and it makes sense to pay the tax.

Also,@Shane Pearlman  @Levi Bennett  Watch for the new Vacation Rental Forum coming soon!