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Airbnb To Start Collecting Hotel Tax On Rentals In San Francisco
An anonymous reader writes Airbnb announced that it will begin collecting a 14% occupancy tax on behalf of its San Francisco hosts October 1. "This is the culmination of a long process that began earlier this year when we announced our intent to help collect and remit occupancy taxes in San Francisco," wrote Airbnb public policy leader David Owen. The company already collects taxes in Portland, and has discussed the possibility of collecting taxes in New York.
Why stay in a hotel when you can stay on the road? Now, with UberRV, you can move around and avoid any pesky taxes. The law says if you're not parked, you're not living there, or at least that's what we're claiming this week. AirBNB is old news thanks to UberRV.
Because face time is important. Interacting with coworkers is important. Being able to go over a design at a whiteboard together rather than reading the same powerpoint slide separately is important. THe best ideas I've had in my career have been created as a result of talking to my coworkers over lunch/coffee break/tangent from another discussion. Telecommuting is a loss to productivity even if they are perfect about actually working (which having done it for a year- its not an easy thing to do, there's a lot of temptations). Its not only easily worth 15-30k, its worth 2-3 times that to have then onsite. That's ignoring the fact that a large number of people won't be on point when working from home- many without even meaning to cheat the system.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Because face time is important. Interacting with coworkers is important. Being able to go over a design at a whiteboard together rather than reading the same powerpoint slide separately is important. THe best ideas I've had in my career have been created as a result of talking to my coworkers over lunch/coffee break/tangent from another discussion. Telecommuting is a loss to productivity even if they are perfect about actually working (which having done it for a year- its not an easy thing to do, there's a lot of temptations). Its not only easily worth 15-30k, its worth 2-3 times that to have then onsite. That's ignoring the fact that a large number of people won't be on point when working from home- many without even meaning to cheat the system.
As a developer I'll just say that "face time" and interacting with coworkers are two of the main impediments to me getting shit done.
they just lost. That's all. I'm sure they fought mightily to avoid paying.
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As a developer I'll just say that "face time" and interacting with coworkers are two of the main impediments to me getting shit done.
That's because you're a curmudgeon. :)
Obviously the people we work with can be distractions, but there's value in being in proximity with the team you work with at least some of the time even if that time is spent just building a sense of being a team.
I have the ability to WFH about 1 day a week now, and previously could do about 2. But I'm not sure even I'd want to do 5 if it were offered. My wife, who does sales, works out of our home (another reason not to be there, amirite!), but even she treks into the corporate office to get face-to-face with her team and visits clients face-to-face after initial video conferences.
Transient Occupancy Taxes are generally higher, for exactly that reason. And note that TOTs are not normally set at the state level but instead at the city level.
I live in California, but stayed in hotels in several other states in the last couple of weeks... 14% occupancy tax does seem high, but this is San Francisco, they love taxes up there...
Dallas = Room + 2% DTPID Fee + 7.1% City Tax + 6.1% State Tax
NYC = Room + Sales Tax 8.875% + Occupancy Tax 5.875% + Room Tax $2.00 + Room Unit Tax $1.55
Boston = Room + State Tax 5.7% + City Tax 6% + CCF Tax 2.75%
Philadelphia = Room + Lodging Tax 8.5% + Sales Tax 8%
In Europe they are much more civilized about it -- they just toss in some huge VAT tax (like 20%) and may or may not mention that it is "included" (how thoughtful of them.) In some places there are still more taxes - in Dublin Ireland, my hotel bill had the room fee, with VAT included, but also added "other local taxes and fees" amounting to 9.25% of that...
In general, the observation that taxing visitors is popular is accurate, and accelerating, it seems.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.