For months, the city of Vienna has been negotiating with Airbnb for a collected collection of local taxes. Now the negotiations have finally failed. According to the city of Vienna, the platform refuses to comply with Austrian law.
Anyone who rents a private apartment to tourists must pay the local tax to the city and set up their own account. If it goes to the city, should take over the platforms such as Airbnb for the individual landlords and landlords collected. For over a year, the negotiations are going. On Wednesday, Finance City Council Peter Hanke (SPÖ) announced the final termination of these negotiations.
The reason is that „essential contractual requirements such as the acceptance of Austrian law or a control over the correctness of the transferred local tax“ would be rejected by Airbnb. One would like to come to a solution with the platform, said Hanke. But „if a company simply does not want to accept Austrian law as a basis and does not respond to any of our key demands, then there is not much room left for a successful conclusion,“ said the city councilor.
Airbnb does not want to share any data
The company had u. a. not prepared to disclose personal data in suspicious cases. Also to an information, whether to a specified address local tax collected and discharged, the room broker was not ready, it was said. The background to this is the amendment to the Vienna Tourism Promotion Act from the previous year, which introduced new provisions for online platforms.
Airbnb offers from Vienna
For private landlords nothing changes
The heart of this is the obligatory transfer of data to the city in order to ensure the transfer of the prescribed local tax. As an alternative, the providers can make arrangements with the town hall, for example, to collect the local tax itself and collectively transferred to the city treasury. According to the city, this has already been achieved with other providers – more on this in First Arrangement with Online Room Rental.
Airbnb regrets demolition
Airbnb regretted the demolition of the negotiations: „All points put forward by the City of Vienna are feasible for us, but unfortunately the city canceled the negotiations prematurely. Airbnb is of course available for a continuation of the talks, „said a spokeswoman for the company. In other cities, automated, digital solutions would already work „very well“.
Airbnb already proactively offered in 2016 to collect the local tax automatically on the platform and transfer it to the city, they say. After the amendment of the law, the offer was „renewed immediately“.
Nothing changes for landlords
Now you want to resort to other means: In the coming days, Airbnb is asked to submit the – legally required – data. If this does not happen, a criminal administrative procedure is initiated, threatened with fines of 38 to 2,100 euros per record not supplied – more in Airbnb & Co .: Stricter rules from spring.
For the landlords and nothing changes by the termination of the negotiations. The legal obligations to open a local tax account, to pay off the local tax correctly and to provide certain statistical reports to the city remain unchanged.
