Tax on short-term rentals delayed
Short-term rental owners in Memphis can breathe a sigh of temporary relief: The City Council voted Tuesday to delay new taxes and room fees on the burgeoning industry until May 1 while the city finalizes a collections agreement with rental company Airbnb Inc.
In addition to unanimously approving the short-term rental resolution, council members voted in committee to recommend an ordinance expanding parking meter hours and game-night rates in the FedExForum area, and reopened a discussion about Beale Street’s future.
The council approved the short-term rental ordinance in November, clearing the city to negotiate voluntary remittal agreements with rental organizations like Airbnb and VRBO. The ordinance set a March 1 start date for collection of a 3.5 percent tax and $2 room fee.
Council member and ordinance sponsor Edmund Ford Jr. received notice Feb. 16 that the agreement with Airbnb wasn’t cemented yet, leading him to sponsor the resolution delaying implementation 60 days. The delay will have a “nominal” impact on revenues, he said.
“The time line is not such that we would be able to collect,” he said.
Earlier in the day, a council committee voted to recommend for approval chairman Berlin Boyd’s ordinance to keep parking meters in the Beale Street Entertainment District and an area that includes The Orpheum Theatre operational around the clock, and to increase meter rates to a flat $10 fee for special events like Memphis Grizzlies games.
Council members questioned the impact on revenues and the cost of collections, which they’ll discuss in committee in two weeks. Meanwhile, the ordinance will be up for the first of three readings before a possible final vote April 18. Boyd said he is still researching the answers to some of those questions but doesn’t plan on making any amendments just yet.
Also Tuesday, ordinances to tighten regulations on false police and fire alarms and to change the way the council resolved union impasses received the first of three required readings, putting them on track for a final vote March 21.
Council members also revisited their concerns with the Beale Street Tourism Development Authority’s decision not to hire firm 21 Beale to manage Beale Street. Council members focused Tuesday on what Tri-State Defender Publisher Bernal Smith said was the longtime exclusion of “African-American voices” on the street’s direction.
“They have established an economic kingdom where things have been put in place to maintain that kingdom,” Smith said of white business owners.
Discussion spilled into the council’s regular meeting when they sent back to committee a routine fiscal consent agenda item approving a $25,000 donation from the Beale Street Merchants Association for “operational activities” by the Memphis Police Department North Main Station. The item will be discussed in the public safety committee in two weeks.