City Wants Taxes from Home Rentals |
| 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 |
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