“City Wants Taxes from Home Rentals” plus 2 more |
- City Wants Taxes from Home Rentals
- New Hire Brings 30 Years of Expertise to Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals
- New Hanover targeting beach rentals for unpaid occupancy taxes
| City Wants Taxes from Home Rentals Posted: 27 Jan 2011 08:41 PM PST Updated: Thursday, 27 Jan 2011, 10:33 PM CST As short-term vacation rentals become increasingly popular in Austin, City officials are looking at how to better regulate them and make sure people are paying the required state hotel tax. If you search the internet for Austin vacation rentals, you'll find hundreds of listings. On Austin-based vacation rental site, HomeAway.com, there are more than 400 in the Austin area. "People love what vacation rentals have to offer as far as space and value," says HomeAway Co-Founder Carl Shepherd. Vacation rentals are popular during events like Austin City Limits music festival and South By Southwest. Some homeowners rent out their properties on a regular basis. "We actually have folks that come and stay year round," says Joel Rasmussen, who owns multiple rental properties just minutes from downtown Austin. "We've hard artists, the director and producer of a very well known movie, well known actors," he says. He always pays the state-required 15% "bed" tax. However, city staff say that not everyone who rents out homes is in compliance. "Any place thats rented out for less than 30 days is required by state law to pay the hotel occupancy tax, collected by the state and a portion is distributed to the city," says City of Austin Senior Planner Robert Heil. At a packed public meeting Thursday night, there was a lot of support for short-term rentals, but also complaints from neighbors of those who rent properties about issues like parties and parking. "We believe that most of those things could be dealt with through education and if we could help people understand how vacation rentals benefit cities then they'd probably embrace them," says Shepherd. For now, the city will look to make sure all rental home owners register with the city and pay the required tax. "The only issue here is compliance," says Rasmussen. "If youre going to rent your home out for less than 30 days, and that includes for the weekends and for SXSW, you need to pay those taxes." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| New Hire Brings 30 Years of Expertise to Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals Posted: 28 Jan 2011 02:56 PM PST 01.28.2011– Vail, CO – Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals (RMVR) is pleased to announce the hire of Patric Gorbitz as Destination Specialist, assisting with the development of the Aspen|Snowmass office. Gorbitz, who has over 30 years of sales and marketing experience in the hospitality industry, will be joining Solomon Liston to expand the company's presence in Pitkin County. "These two guys together (Liston and Gorbitz) will be a great team in capturing the vacation rental and real estate potential in Aspen and Snowmass," says James Bengala, Director of Sales and Marketing for Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals. Gorbitz has excelled in various sales and marketing positions that he's held in the Aspen region. Among these he has done radio sales with KSPN Radio, was the Sales and Marketing Director for Frias Properties (6 years) and the Inn at Aspen (5 years), and most recently he worked for Blue Tent Marketing, where he specialized in internet marketing for the past 5 years. Gorbitz graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing, and offers a genuine perspective as an Aspen resident of 27 years. He enjoys Aspen's terrain for its ski and golf and lives with his wife, Heidi, and two kids, Cheyenne (15) and Logan (9). "It is an exciting opportunity to be in a position where there is such high growth potential," says Gorbitz, who is eager to see the advancement of RMVR in its Aspen location. Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals looks forward to the rich expertise that Gorbitz has to offer, especially during this time of positive industry trends and record snowfall. ### About Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals Rocky Mountain Vacation Rentals was founded by owner Tommy Z. Hoffman in 2000. RMVR is a vacation rental provider, offering excellent service with "Friendly. Knowledgeable. Locals.™" in the Rocky Mountain Region. RMVR works with property management companies, who provide privately owned homes and condos for rent, executive luxury properties, ski in and ski out access, and fractional ownership. RMVR utilizes a local staff whose love for the region, skiing, snowboarding, and all that summer in the mountains has to offer with full concierge services. To learn more, please visit http://rockymountainvacationrentals.com or call 1-888-364-7596. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| New Hanover targeting beach rentals for unpaid occupancy taxes Posted: 28 Jan 2011 08:46 AM PST Vacation rentals at area beaches are required to pay room occupancy taxes, just like hotels and motels. New Hanover County is looking into direct rentals by private property owners to make sure they are also paying occupancy taxes. Photos.com photo Published: Friday, January 28, 2011 at 11:24 a.m. Visitors bureau president Kim Hufham has a stack of papers on her desk detailing listings of rent-by-owner vacation properties that Wrightsville Beach's code enforcement officer found on a website. The question is whether the owners of the rentals are remitting room occupancy taxes to the county and the state, but Hufham does not know. It's an issue many municipalities and counties across the state battle, as the only way to determine if someone renting lodging is remitting taxes is to match up owner information to the county's tax documents. But that's only if you know that someone is renting a room or home, Hufham said. The room occupancy tax rate in New Hanover County is 6 percent, and the owner of any hotel, cottage, campground or other short-term rental accommodations must report monthly sales to the tax office by the 15th day after the reporting month. Room tax revenues fund the county's visitors bureau, and each beach town gets a share of the revenues to go toward tourism-related projects and events. With the rise in online vacation rentals and the suspicion that many municipalities are missing out on tourism funds, Hufham said, enforcing the room occupancy tax has become a statewide legislative issue. N.C. Rep. Susi Hamilton, D-New Hanover, was recently appointed to the state's tourism board and said the issue is likely to come up at a future meeting. She said she was not aware of any proposed legislation, but she said tourism officials expressed concern during her campaign about missing out on room occupancy tax revenues. "Anything that's going to add revenues to our businesses is definitely something that North Carolina General Assembly should consider," she said, adding she thinks that tourism funds used to promote the area have a direct link to the success of local businesses. In the meantime, Hufham said she was going to turn over the rental listings to the county's tax office to see if they can be matched against tax records. The tax office also would be charged with enforcing the collection of those taxes, she said. Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Bob Simpson said online rentals and determining whether someone is on the radar for tax collection is a gray area. "It just came up at a marketing committee meeting, and they're trying to figure out a way to get their arms around it," he said. "And this may be an adequate response, or it may not." A couple of years ago the county's Tourism Development Authority hired an agency to conduct a countywide audit of rentals to discover which agencies or individuals were not paying the room tax. Brunswick County tourism officials also recently considered conducting an audit but decided it wasn't worth the expense and effort. The Brunswick County Tourism Development Authority collects just 1 percent of room occupancy taxes from its unincorporated areas and from municipalities, with the exception of Bald Head Island. And some towns, such as Ocean Isle Beach, take a more direct approach to enforce room occupancy tax compliance. A staff member in that town routinely checks rent-by-owner websites to ensure owners or management firms are remitting taxes. While it might be time-consuming, officials there say collections have increased and more people are educated about collecting and remitting taxes. After all, tourism officials say most of those who aren't paying the room tax simply might be uninformed. "It's not necessarily people trying to swindle," Hufham said. Shannan Bowen: 343-2016 On Twitter: @shanbow This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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