Firm will track local short-term rental sites

Ulster County Executive Michael Hein has signed a contract with a Utah-based firm that will identify properties in the county being advertised on the internet for short-term lodging.

Hein said the information will help “level the playing field” within the hospitality industry by ensuring those who advertise their properties on such sites as Airbnb.com are held to the same standards as traditional hotels and motels.

Under the one-year deal, the firm, Bear Cloud Software, will scour online short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, VRBO and HomeAway, identify properties, and turn the information over to the county.

The county will pay $25,000 for the service, which will include not just the ongoing data research, but also the automation of the enforcement administration and the creation of an online registration portal for operators.

“Our local municipalities ... have no idea on what is going on from a short-term rental perspective in their community, so this action will help provide a clear list to all the municipalities of the short-term rentals that are taking place within their boundaries and allow them, through

their code enforcement officers, to make sure there is a level of safety for everybody who visits Ulster County,” Hein said.

The information also is expected to enable the county to ensure the establishments are paying sales

tax and the county’s hotel/ motel tax on the rentals.

“Right now in Ulster County, anyone that regularly offers a room for shortterm rental is required to register with the Department of Finance and [collect] a 2 percent occupancy tax [from guests],” Hein said.

For some time, Ulster County legislators have grappled with how to collect

the occupancy tax from the online short-term rental community.

In 2016, county Comptroller Elliott Auerbach first raised the prospect of cashing in on the short-term rental business by levying on those rentals the same 2 percent occupancy tax now charged to patrons of the county’s hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfast establishments.

The proposal never gained traction, though, because both legislative and county attorneys said the state law that allows the county to levy the bed tax didn’t extend to lodging booked through such services as Airbnb.

During a recent meeting of the Legislature’s Laws and Rules Committee, Deputy Comptroller Evan Gallo said the county lost out on

roughly $300,000 in revenue in 2017 by failing to levy the bed tax on Airbnb rentals and others like them.

Deputy County Executive Ken Crannell said the county isn’t collecting all the tax it could from the short-term rental business but said Gallo exaggerated the amount.

County Legislator James Maloney, I-Saugerties, has introduced a resolution

calling for the county to enter into a voluntary agreement with Airbnb to collect the tax from users of its site, but Crannell said the deal would not apply to other online rental platforms and would inhibit the county’s ability to seek noncompliant businesses and force them to register with the county, to audit the businesses, or to collect unpaid back taxes.