Airbnb pays $191,000 in tourist taxes
Installment is first to Broward
Home-sharing booking website Airbnb announced Tuesday that it collected and remitted $191,000 in tourist or “bed taxes” to Broward County forMay.
That’s the first month that Airbnb’s new tax collection agreement with Broward County became active. Thedeal requires the company to remit tourist taxes on the short-term rentals booked by travelers who stay with Airbnb hosts in private homes, apartments and condos.
In Broward, a 5 percent tourism tax is levied for overnight stays in local hotels, motels and other shortterm rentals. The tax is now applicable for stays at alternative accommodations offered through Airbnb.
Presently, 75 percent of Broward’s tourist tax funds are allocated for tourism purposes and the rest to the county-owned BB&T Center sports and entertainment complex in Sunrise— home of the Florida Panthers professional hockey team.
Those purposes include beach re-nourishment, convention center operations and destination promotion and marketing by the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors’ Bureau, according to county officials.
When the deal with Airbnb was struck in April, Broward officials said it could potentially bring in more than $1 million in additional annual revenue. Stacey Ritter, the tourism bureau president, predicted Tuesday that the Airbnb money will save the county from a potential shortfall this year.
“The collection Stacey Ritter, Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors’ Bureau president of [the] Airbnb tourist development tax will offset any possible shortfall in tax collections resulting from reduced average daily rate over the past several months,” Ritter said. “The county [now] predicts total bed tax collections for fiscal 2017 to be flat compared with fiscal 2016.”
A similarly brokered agreement with MiamiDade County, also effective inMay, brought in $522,000 in tourist taxes there, Airbnb said in a news release.
In all, San Franciscobased Airbnb said it collected and remitted more than $18 million in sales and tourist taxes to state and local governments across Florida during the first five months of the year. Of that amount, $14.6 million was sales tax revenue submitted to the Florida Department of Revenue as of June 1, Airbnb said. A total of $4.6 million in bed taxes was remitted to 39 Florida counties that assess the tax and maintain agreements with Airbnb.
In South Florida, Airbnb also has a tourist tax collection agreement with Surfside, one of three MiamiDade municipalities that assess their own tourist development tax. For the first five months of 2017, Airbnb said it remitted $5,000 in bed taxes to Surfside.
The company does not have similar tax collection agreements with Miami Beach and BalHarbour Village, which assess their own tourist development tax. No agreement is in place with Palm Beach County.
Across South Florida, Airbnb has more than 3,600 active hosts in Broward; 7,100-plus in Miami-Dade andmore than1,800 inPalm Beach County, according to the travel company.
asatchell@sun-sentinel .com, 954-356-4209, Twitter @TheSatchreport