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A little over 2 weeks back I wrote about how airbnb won a NYC appeal and members would be allowed to rent out rooms as long as a resident was home.
After hearing about this outcome I figured that airbnb would be safe and legal to use in NYC for years to come.
I received an e-mail from airbnb about signing a petition to change NY laws. The petition already has 3,500 signature but their goal is to get to 20,000. If the petition reaches that goal by October 20th an airbnb host Mishelle plans to personally deliver it to the NY senate.
When I checked the petition last night, there were 19,301 signatures so the goal will more than likely be reached.
What law is Mishelle’s petition trying to change? The New York Attorney General has subpoenaed the records of most of airbnb’s NY hosts. This subpoena is being fought to a change an old law which was “originally designed to stop slumlords from running illegal hotels with dozens of rental apartments”.
While I don’t host guests through airbnb, we did book a stay with airbnb during our trip to Singapore in the Summer of 2012. We had a great experience with airbnb and would defintely use it again.
For this reason, I support airbnb and immediately signed the petition.
If you’d like to sign the petition to help save airbnb in NY, click here.
Have any of you booked a stay with airbnb. If so, how did it go?
If you read the local coverage, it sounds like the court case that was won a few weeks ago is different than the attorney general’s recent subpoena. The AG doesn’t want to go after people who are just renting out a spare room occasionally, but is targeting those who are running a business but not paying taxes that they should be paying. There are people who rent out apartments just so they can rent them full time on AirBnb. These people should be paying taxes in the same manner a hotel or other business would. Do you think people trying to make money by renting their apartments should be exempt from tax laws? AirBnb is really negligent about advising their users on tax issues.
I did not read a great deal into this case. This post was based on the e-mail I received from airbnb and the online petiton. If the people the attorney general is going after are running a business through airbnb and not just renting a spare room on occassion, they should definitely be paying taxes. I thought people renting spare rooms paid taxes too whenever a room was booked?