Have You Ever Used Airbnb? Taxman Might Be Looking For You
If you've rented a room using Airbnb in the last year, you should probably start getting out the tax books.
Thousands of Irish people who let out rooms in the popular holiday rental website Airbnb are facing retrospective tax bills, after the site announced it was obliged to “to provide certain information to the Office of the Revenue Commissioners”.
The site, which let its users know the news view e-mail, will provide the Revenue Commission with the names of its users, the addresses they rented, and their homes addresses, as well as the amounts earned in rent and cleaning fees from May 1st to December 31st of last year.
The company also stated that they will be supplying the date of the first secured booking for those who joined the site before May 1st.
As part of the Revenue published guidelines for their rent-a-room scheme, which allows up to €12,000 to be earned tax-free per year, but that doesn't include short-term lets "where such accommodation is provided through online accommodation booking sites".
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With a room in Dublin going for roughly €60 a night, and the tax rate possibly going as high as 51%, the bill could come a bit of of a shock to those using the wite to supplement their income last year.
There are 540 rooms listed on the site for Dublin this weekend alone, so let's just hope they put a bit away for the taxman.
Are you a frequent user of Airbnb? Would you recommend it (apart from the taxman, natch)?