Finance Minister Ardwell Irion.
PHILIPSBURG--The intention of an agreement being hammered out with homestay vacation rental marketplace Airbnb, is that the latter will collect a 5 per cent tax from renters in St. Maarten and transfer this on a quarterly basis to the government of St. Maarten, Finance Minister Ardwell Irion told Members of Parliament (MPs) on Thursday.
A “dedicated” Tax Inspector has been working on the agreement with Airbnb, a process that resumed when Irion took office. Irion told MPs during the continuation of a meeting of Parliament’s Finance Committee that there had been some difficulties with the initial public offering with Airbnb, whose key representatives St. Maarten needed to get in touch with to continue with its agreement became a little bit more difficult to contact during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In short, the agreement will be that Airbnb will collect the taxes on behalf of government and Airbnb, on a quarterly basis, will pay us the lump sum of taxes. This will eliminate us having to…, as a former government wanted to do, individually go and search for every house that is listed. We don’t have the capacity or resources to do that and I believe that it is also inefficient,” Irion said.
“If Airbnb collects on our behalf and the five per cent is transferred (from) the clients and we collect the bulk of it and not have to spend resources again doing research, going on websites and then going door-to-door and so forth, which I thought, is very inefficient. That process is continuing and hopefully we can have that done before the end of this year.
In response to a question from United St. Maarten Party (US Party) MP Claudius “Toontje” Buncamper on whether St. Maarten will know which renters the funds are coming from since persons who are renting, will have to declare their extra income when filing their income tax; Irion said, while the full agreement is not yet finalized, in other countries, Airbnb does not release the private information of persons listed on its website.
“They do pay the bulk of the money and it is still up to government then to go and find out about these persons..., but at the very least, we [will- Ed.] solve the issue of collecting the funds and with the funds collected we can spend a little bit of that to find out who, and so forth. There are software websites that focus on the data from Airbnb so it’s not impossible, we can find them,” Irion said.
Airbnb, Inc. operates an online marketplace for lodging, primarily homestays for vacation rentals, and tourism activities. It is based in San Francisco, California. The platform is accessible via website and mobile app.
