Airbnb is a Platform Not an Estate Agent, Says Europe's Top Court (techcrunch.com) 52
Airbnb will be breathing a sigh of relief today: Europe's top court has judged it to be an online platform which merely connects people looking for short term accommodation, rather than a full-blown estate agent. From a report: The ruling may make it harder for the 'home sharing' platform to be forced to comply with local property regulations -- at least under current regional rules governing ecommerce platforms. The judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today follows a complaint made by a French tourism association, AHTOP, which had argued Airbnb should hold a professional estate agent licence. And, that by not having one, the platform giant was in breach of a piece of French legislation known as the 'Hoguet Law.' However the court disagreed -- siding with Airbnb's argument that its business must be classified as an 'information society service' under EU Directive 2000/31 on electronic commerce.
Aitbnb vs Uber (Score:3)
People renting out their houses/apartments get to set the price they charge. With Uber the price gets set by Uber (or Uber's algorithm)
Airbnb seems more like a platform than Uber.
Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters laws (Score:2)
Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters laws.
Re:Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters law (Score:5, Insightful)
"Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters laws."
But so does any communication medium. If I put an ad in a newspaper saying "Home for rent, $1,000/week Phone (321)555-1234" I could easily avoid hotel and renters laws. Neither the newspaper or the phone company are held liable for me breaking hotel/renter laws.
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You can say that they don't take a cut off the deal, so your analogy is not good, but in regards to the actual issue, as there is an online platform classification it does sound more appropriate for Airbnb.
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The company that charged for the ad certainly did get a cut. Sure it was most likely a flat fee, but nonetheless it was a cut.
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They don't have a built-in rating/booking system; they don't guarantee payment; they don't insure against damages, etc.
Airbnb is more like a real-estate agent than a newspaper. You want a newspaper analogy; look at what Craigslist does.
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They are a contracting agent. They establish the legal contract between the operator of a private hotel and it's customers. As the contracting agent, they are not providing information, they are providing for profit legal contracting service between parties and are a part of that contract and acting to provide legal services in the formation of that contract. Hence they are liable for any criminal actions associated with that contract, like the premises not being licensed as short term hotel accommodation a
Re: Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters la (Score:2)
Neither the newspaper or the phone company are held liable for me breaking hotel/renter laws.
Pfft, this got modded up?? Neither the newspaper nor (sic) the phone company are in on the deal and neither get a fat percentage.
It's highly amusing how these multinationals never hire shills able to intelligently debate.
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It's the landlords (the property owners) that the governments and competitors want to regulate--not the renters.
But the regulations still apply to the landlords whether or not Airbnb is considered an estate agent--they are just more difficult to enforce.
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Airbnb is considered an estate agent--they are just more difficult to enforce. ... why would it?
No it is not
The Landlord has the exact same regulations - if any - regardless if he rents via AirBnB or a newspaper advert.
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Violating is the same. Collecting is not. It's far easier to attack Air B&B for tax payments then 10,000 individual homeowners.
In US states, sales taxes are owed on the transaction typically, and both sides are responsible for it. In practice, the government mandates the business collect it and send it in, and in turn they usually make the customer pay it. But the business could pay it out of its chunk, which is why they can get away with "we pay the sales tax!" ads from time to time. They even had
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I'm in the US, but here they collect the Hotel Tax on behalf of the home owner, and submit it to the County or City depending on address. Which is good, because none of these idiots see themselves as business owners, they don't spend any money on overhead like bookkeeping or accountants, it is just something they do on the side. They view it like a yard sale, when really it is the same as a hotel. Without Airbnb being smart enough to cover their asses and collect the tax for the owners, it would never get p
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it is just something they do on the side. They view it like a yard sale, when really it is the same as a hotel.
No it is not.
I live in a 4 room flat, paying rent, lets say $800 for easier calculation.
I rent our one room occationally, lets assume, it is always a full month.
So at random months, I "receive" $200: but I make no earnings!! it is only subtracted from my upfront bill
If you own a flat, that might be different, though.
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I believe that your tax inspector would disagree with you.
You pay the $800/month whether or not someone is staying there. Hence the $200 that you make is pure profit.
It might be different if you made the room available to rent most of the time.
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I believe that your tax inspector would disagree with you.
Nope.
You pay the $800/month whether or not someone is staying there. Hence the $200 that you make is pure profit.
Nope. It is no difference if my landlord rents me 3 rooms and one to the other guy, or rents me 4 rooms, and I rent one out. Or every "community" would be a profit organization for the main renter (*facepalm*)
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Try reading all of my post.
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Wouldn't it be Schedule E in this case?
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Almost every hotel works the same way. It's often $700/month in debt (or perhaps $400 in debt and $300 in lease payments for the land) and $100/month for staff, but the principle is the same. It's a rare hotel that's cashflow positive on room rentals, at least after taxes. And you do owe those taxes regardless of profits, they're taxes on being a hotel, separate from taxes on profits.
Of course, if you actually did this regularly and went through all the hassle and expense of paying all the different tax
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Why...that sounds like a system set up to encourage payments to government officials to look the other way!
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Almost every hotel works the same way. It's often $700/month in debt
No, it does not. It is a business like a bakery.
A hotel is not a place where one rents three dozen rooms, and occationally subrents one. (What is he actually doing with the rooms?) A hotel is a business centered around having all rooms occupied day by day. It is a thing constructed with the goal to earn a profit. A renter who subrents a room in the flat he lives in does not do that to make a business but to mitigate costs. There are no spe
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You seem to be disagreeing with me, but your post is a non-sequitur, so I'm confused.
Hotels aren't usually cashflow positive on room rentals. They may make a profit on the other stuff on your bill, and especially on "catering space" (meeting rooms and such) and services provided for them, such as meals. But if you look just at rooms, they're normally just offsetting the cost of the property and building.
In the long run, that's a good business, as it ends up covering the mortgage and in 20 years you own th
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I don't muddy anything.
It is legally no difference if I subrent long term or short term.
The only question, tax wise is: do I make a profit, or not.
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They may make a profit on the other stuff on your bill, and especially on "catering space" (meeting rooms and such) and services provided for them, such as meals. But if you look just at rooms, they're normally just offsetting the cost of the property and building.
Most hotels have no significant services to offer other than rooms.
And they make a profit, or else they'd go out of business.
If it was movie theaters and popcorn, it would be a reasonable argument, because if you go to 100 random theaters every single one was selling overpriced popcorn and soda to a captive audience.
But when you go to 100 random hotels, only the bigger ones have any sort of conference room, and only the expensive ones have things like catering.
It is completely wrong, you're just making up d
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The basic money-making proposition for a hotel is one of real estate investment. It's great and all if you can be cashflow positive on rooms, and some are for some part of the year, or in good economic times, but it usually averages out to around break-even after taxes, staff, and maintenance. However, you're paying down the debt associated with the hotel, so long-term it's a good business.
Again, this is why it's common for hotel chains to be REITs. They're a commercial real estate play, for all the vola
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but it usually averages out to around break-even after taxes, staff, and maintenance
You can wave your hands all day, but you can't make this true.
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it is just something they do on the side. They view it like a yard sale, when really it is the same as a hotel.
No it is not.
I live in a 4 room flat, paying rent, lets say $800 for easier calculation.
I rent our one room occationally, lets assume, it is always a full month.
So at random months, I "receive" $200: but I make no earnings!! it is only subtracted from my upfront bill
If you own a flat, that might be different, though.
You seem to be confused about what sort of taxes are being discussed. That being the case, maybe you should stop talking, and listen?
If you rented it out through Airbnb, the Hotel Tax was collected. They have to collect it for you, because you, like most of their clients, have no ability to comprehend the regulatory regime that covers your financial activities. If they didn't collect it, neither would you, and they'd get in trouble for facilitating so much tax fraud.
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That's a myth put out by airbnb, the overwhelming majority of listings are owned by professional full-time landlords who are basically running illegal unregulated hotels while pretending to be a homeowner making money on the side.
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That's a myth put out by airbnb
It might help your point to have a point if you articulated what it is that you think is a myth.
It is easy to verify how much money was turned over to a city or county for hotel taxes.
I presume that, like most people who respond without articulating any point, that you merely scanned my words and your response is not actually responsive.
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If you're going to get pedantic, "let us" is what contracts to let's. That means Airbnb let us skip hotel and renters law.
But then it's probably either renter's law or renters' laws (as there's likely more than one law).
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And which law exactly would that be, especially in the EU? I'm curious!
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Airbnb let's renters skip hotel and renters laws.
No they don't.
In many states, Airbnb is required to collect tax IDs and permit numbers from the landlords, and to report each rental to the state. The state can then see who is paying their transient accommodation taxes.
If the same landlord also advertises on Craigslist, or uses Google/Facebook ads to drive traffic to their own website, they are LESS likely to pay the TAT and follow other rules than for their Airbnb bookings.
Disclaimer: I list on Airbnb. I also list on other platforms. I pay TAT.
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If Airbnb is a platform, they can still be required to report data to the government. But if the tax isn't paid, the government will have to go after the landlord rather than Airbnb. That seems reasonable to me.
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That's not reasonable to government, who wants to only deal with large corporations too big to hide and with enough owed cumulatively to be worth pursuit.
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If that's the case, it shows that the laws were doing nothing but holding back the economy and reducing overall quality of life.
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People renting out their houses/apartments get to set the price they charge.
And what they're offering, Uber is trying to make standardized taxi rides where people expect roughly the same experience no matter which driver fulfills your order. It's a huge difference between a food delivery service that connects restaurants and clients and a franchise service where everyone's serving the same menu. If you have both creative control and pricing control then it's more of a marketplace like Etsy.
Perhaps the property owners should ... (Score:2)
... hold a professional estate agent licence.
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Yep. To me, Airbnb is no different than Expedia, Trivago, etc-just an aggregator for lodging listings. But the places on Airbnb are unlicensed hotels. Any lodging on the site should be required to adhere to any applicable local or national laws, regulations, or licensing requirements.
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They might be "unlicensed" but also in many locations merely "too small to need a license." Certainly depends on location. Here, no license is needed if there are less than some number of units on the property, etc., etc., but the hotel room tax is still required to be paid. Airbnb plays ball and collects and submits the taxes on behalf of the property owners.
So at least in some locations they are adhering to all the applicable laws. (there is basically nothing federal in the US that regulates hotels)
In the
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You can rent your place out with a simple hand shake agreement if you choose to do so. It seems like a platform that lets property owners rent their places out.
Regardless, airbnb definitely allows people to dodge hotel and rental laws. Same as garage sales dodging sales taxes, except airbnb is huge and brings in mass profits while your garage sale is probably closer to a hobby then a serious endeavor.
I really like the idea of property owners being able to do as they wish with their property but there are zo
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Regardless, airbnb definitely allows people to dodge hotel and rental laws.
No, it does not. First of all "hotel laws" don't apply for AirBnB's, why would they?
Secondly: AirBnB is collecting the taxes and sends them on the behalf of the landlord to the authorities, nothing dodged at all.
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Same as garage sales dodging sales taxes
With garage sales, the items have all already had taxes paid on them. And the items are being sold at a loss. If there was a profit, then there might be a portion of the sales price that wasn't originally taxed and tax would be owed. That would be incredibly rare.
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Usually there's a rule of two or three days a week (weekend) before it counts as retail and you owe sales taxes.
My state just crushed large emporia with stalls that operated this way, weekends only, by un-exempting them while not affecting garage sales. "Hooray! More tax mon...oh, they closed."
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Repeat:
If there was a profit, then there might be a portion of the sales price that wasn't originally taxed and tax would be owed.
Taxes were probably paid on the ingredients, but it would be less than the final sale price.
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In my State landlords, including hoteliers don't hold a professional real estate agent license. That regulates people selling homes, but not people renting them.
A property manager is licensed, but that is because they're hiring and overseeing maintenance, which has to be done to code, some of it only be certain licensed professionals.
Neither the property owner nor the middleman in this case would even qualify for a property management license.
It should be regulated, but there is no reason to assume that it
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The fix isn't to tie them up in courts for years. It's to just pass appropriate regulations for what unforeseen things the new technology enables.
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And only then if there are real issues that need to be addressed. Government actually has trouble proving this when push comes to shove in a court case justifying the regulation.