Monroe County officials are researching a proposal from an online firm that says it can search more than a dozen major online vacation-rental websites and provide information on local “hosts” to code-enforcement officers and the tax collector.
“We’re still looking it,” Monroe County Tax Collector Denise Henriquez said Friday. “We want to make sure it can give us the information we need so we can find out if people are operating legally and paying their taxes.”
“If someone is renting out a bed in their home” for short-term rentals, Henriquez said, “they owe taxes on it.”
The county tax collector’s office has taken the lead on seeking vacation-rental taxes countywide since January 2015, in conjunction with county and municipal code-enforcement staff.
“We’ve collected about $230,000 of previously uncollected revenue since January 2015,” Henriquez said. In some cases, the agency was able to collect up to three years of overdue taxes. “We estimate what they owe. It’s up to [owners] to show us that our estimates are not correct by providing records and income taxes.”
The office, which now has four people assigned to the tourist-tax division, created 693 new accounts for owners legally obligated to pay tourist taxes, and closed other rentals that “were not compliant” with local regulations, often involving short-term rentals in zoning areas where they are not permitted.
Key West, Islamorada and unincorporated Monroe County classify a short-term rental as less than 28 days. Marathon and Key Colony Beach say vacation rentals must run at least seven days. All areas require licensing and inspection, in addition to collection of the Keys’ nightly bed tax of 12.5 percent (7.5 percent goes to the state, the rest to the county or municipality).
Airbnb, the nation’s largest specialty vacation-rental booking site, offered to collect tourist taxes from its client hosts in Monroe County and forward the taxes in an overall lump sum. So far, Airbnb has insisted on not revealing names of the hosts or addresses of the rentals.
That’s a deal-breaker, county commissioners and the tax collector agreed. “We have to get the names and [street] numbers to do our job,” Henriquez said.
County Attorney Bob Shillinger is working with officials in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties to see if a class-action suit over vacation-rental taxes is warranted.
©2016 the Florida Keys Keynoter (Marathon, Fla.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
