Short-Term Rental Hotel/Motel Tax Collection Law Goes into Effect

As of July 1, online lodging platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo are required to collect and pay to counties and cities all hotel/motel taxes due on short-term rentals (STRs) that are hosted via those platforms. This requirement stems from House Bill 317, a 2021 ACCG legislative agenda item. The goals of this legislation are to improve tax collection, reduce the burden on STR owners to collect the tax, and create parity with traditional hotels and motels that are already collecting hotel/motel taxes. For stays booked via these platforms, HB 317 places the obligation to collect the hotel/motel tax on the platform rather than the individual property owner.

 

ACCG is working to obtain points of contact with the online lodging platforms, and counties that have a hotel/motel tax are encouraged to identify an in-house point of contact for questions relating to this new collection and payment requirement. ACCG anticipates that each online lodging platform will remit hotel/motel tax collections on a monthly basis for all STRs within your jurisdiction and not broken down by individual properties. Counties and cities do have the same authority to periodically audit and inspect the records of the online platforms as they do for traditional hotels and motels to verify that the tax is correctly being paid.

 

The Georgia Department of Community Affairs recently conducted a webinar to discuss HB 317. A full recording of the webinar is available at this link, and a PDF version of the slides from that webinar is available at this link. ACCG will provide additional information regarding implementation of HB 317 as it becomes available.