Montreal City Weblog

Kate 16:57 on 2019-08-01 Permalink Reply  

• david100 17:47 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  Quebec can hammer them if it wants to. Airbnb’s decision makers are either ignoring the advice of the legal team and/or doing a game of chicken with the government.

  I bet the government does nothing.

• JaneyB 18:21 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  They need to be reminded who’s boss. Legault: you may unleash the dogs now.

• Ian 20:11 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  It’s about time the government does SOMETHING. it’s like every agency is waiting to see which one will make the first move.

• Ephraim 20:55 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  Not the smartest move… RQ now finally has a reason to come down hard on everyone. I bet you that the government will finally change the reporting requirement and make them issue a Releve and then in the dogs of war… at $2500 to $5000 per night per infraction.

• Ian 21:00 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  It’s been 7 months, RQ needs to do something, anything.

• Chris 21:45 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  JaneyB, corporations are the boss, not government.

  Ephraim, I bet you the opposite, they will continue to leave it alone.

• mare 22:23 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  Airbnb, and other foreign companies like Netflix etc. are afraid this will set a precedent, and that soon every country wants them to charge sales tax. They re also worried this will be the foot that’ll open the door to full access of foreign tax collection agencies to their books. They claim that they’re just a broker and that their hosts are responsible to charge sales taxes if they have to. But at least in Quebec, most small hosts don’t need to charge sales tax since they don’t reach the threshold for reporting. (They do need to file income taxes but Airbnb REALLY doesn’t want to reveal that amount. ) Bigger outfits, with 10 or 25 condos on offer year round per straw man, do make much more than the threshold, but they don’t pay it now. If Airbnb is forced to charge sales tax, they also have to show other data to RQ so they can check if the reporting amounts are correct. And then it might become clear that some companies rent /manage 100s, maybe 1000s of addresses, and basically run hotels without the overhead.

  It gets even more complicated when someone from Montreal rents a place on Airbnb in Montreal, where they should pay both GST and TVQ. Then Revenu Canada also wants access to the pot with gold.

• steph 23:44 on 2019-08-01 Permalink

  Why does the government hesitate to go after them?

• Chris 08:14 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  steph, because, as with netflix, the general public love Airbnb. Remember last election everyone promising not to introduce a ‘netflix tax’? Same idea.

• Ian 11:18 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  There’s a lot of negative sentiment toward AirBnB from locals who aren’t the ones renting out their properties, though. Yes everyone loves Netflix because cable sucks. Only a segment of tourists and those who illegally convert their rental property into untaxed temporary hotels love AirBnB.

  I suspect that mare has hit the nail on the head – it’s actually pretty complicated. I do hope RQ et all get their ducks in a row soon, though, because this is getting ridiculous.

• Ephraim 11:22 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  Mare, AirBnB’s fees are over the threshold and therefore they should be registered for GST/QST. But besides that, Expedia and Booking.com both collect the tax and AirBnB has an office in Quebec as well as a .CA domain, which means they have a company in Canada. They themselves should be subject to the taxes, at least on their fees.

  I don’t think that Quebec can allow this to continue…. or more and more companies will play this exempt game. But I also think that Quebec will change the law and make AirBnB issue receipts for hosts or require AirBnB to issue a report with incomes over $1000, just as PayPal does.

  I think that AirBnB is hoping that this doesn’t get through until after their IPO, because once Quebec does it, all the rest of the provinces and the federal will want to do it as well…. and that doesn’t bode well for their IPO. And yet they collect VAT in Europe. And they issue tax papers in the US and Europe. It seems that they are only profitable as a tax evasion scheme in Quebec. (I know of a few cases where people have ended up in BAD trouble with RQ for not declaring or collecting taxes. One guy paid $62K in GST/QST and fines for not collecting those taxes… and was lucky, because he had declared the income. One guy in Quebec city wasn’t so lucky with a building he turned into a illegal hotel on AirBnB.)

• Kevin 12:37 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  We know that while there are lots of small fry renting out their place occasionally with Airbnb, the majority of revenue comes from places that are modular hotels.

  Governments just need to come out and tell people that if they want healthcare/roads/whatever those international companies need to pay their taxes, or else personal income taxes can go up.

• Ephraim 13:14 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  The small fries are covered by a law that allows you to rent if you are present that doesn’t require a sign and doesn’t have commercial taxes on the property. If you rent out a full apartment that you do not occupy and where you don’t receive your mail and where you don’t have your belongings, you need a permit. Those guys are about 90% of the market in Montreal…. if not more. AirBnB as a place where individuals rent out their place while away is a MYTH… that AirBnB perpetuates because it’s good for the press…. but they can’t make enough money on these places… and these people constantly give up after finding out how disrespectful most people on AirBnB can be (not that they all are, but you should hear some of the stories). On the other hand, people expect hosts to be professionals when they aren’t… they are amateurs… so you get cancelled reservations, etc. (One story recently was a guy who found out that his reservation was cancelled in the morning because the host went on a bender… so he woke in the morning to find out he had no place to stay and AirBnB themselves had kicked him out, not the host… but because of the host’s actions that caused another guest to freak out.) And of course the attitudes that some of the guests have and requests for refunds for minor things just drives more and more people from hosting… so you get the companies doing it to avoid taxes and make more than apartment rentals.

• Chris 21:31 on 2019-08-02 Permalink

  I guess time will tell.