San Francisco Wants to Toughen Airbnb Law at the Ballot Box
Photo Credit: Airbnb is fighting its hometown of San Francisco on amendments to a new law requiring tax collection on short-term rentals. The proposed amendments would reduce the number of days a unit can be rented each year. Airbnb
Skift Take
The City of Portland, Oregon recently proposed similar amendments to its short-term rental law but was slow to impose any penalties. Since Airbnb is headquartered in San Francisco you can only imagine how much bloodier this battle has become.
The saga of laws passed to regulate Airbnb and other short-term rental sites continues in San Francisco as the company goes head-to-head with its hometown that wants to see amendments to its law at the ballot box in November.
Signed into law last fall and effective February 1, 2015, the short-term rental law, which some call the Airbnb Law, in San Francisco requires home-sharing site hosts to register with the city and for the sites to regularly report the addresses, room nights and revenue generated by residences rented out through platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway and others.
The law also requires the platforms to collect and remit any applicable transient occupancy tax requested by the city and rentals are capped at 90 days per year per unit. According to the city, so far only 170 of the more than 3,000 home-share hosts in San Francisco have registered.
David Campos, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors, told Skift that the law is not enforceable as it stand
