Airbnb guests will now pay additional charge in Polk

BARTOW — Travelers who book short stays in Polk County through the website Airbnb will notice an additional charge on their bills.

The Polk County Tax Collector’s Office has reached an agreement with Airbnb, a worldwide home-sharing platform, to collect tourist development taxes from guests who book stays in the county. Those are the same taxes paid by guests at traditional hotels.

Polk County Tax Collector Joe Tedder announced the agreement Thursday, saying it was the culmination of about a year of discussions between his office and Airbnb, founded in 2008 and based in San Francisco.

He estimated the agreement will yield $20,000 to $25,000 per month in tourism taxes, and he said that figure is likely to grow substantially.

Polk County levies a tourist development tax of 5 percent on top of the county’s 7 percent sales tax.

Under the agreement, Tedder said Airbnb plans to collect the taxes for its hosts and remit the money to the county each month.

“Airbnb has been on our radar and a lot of other taxing jurisdictions’ radar for quite some time,” he said. “So we have been working with them for a little over a year, trying to get to an agreement we felt allowed us to do what our statutory duty is.”

Money from the Tourist Development Tax, often referred to as a “bed tax,” goes to the Tourist Development Council for use in promoting the county as a tourist destination.

Airbnb reached an agreement with the state in December 2015 to automatically collect sales tax on rentals, company spokesman Ben Breit said. Airbnb has now forged tourism tax agreements with 35 Florida counties, he said.

Polk has a higher proportion of vacation rental homes than most Florida counties, Tedder said. Those home-based rentals provide about 40 percent of the county’s tourism tax money.

Airbnb has about 32,000 active hosts in Florida, Breit said.