I find it interesting that the law has been in place since April, but only enforced as of October, which is presumably when all these listings were removed.
Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
151–160 of 405 posts
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regulatory arbitrage of some sort seems to be involved in many recent digital business models. Whether it concerns or involves (lack of) data privacy regulation, "reinventing" labour contracts or undercutting taxation frameworks, it is a most cruel reminder of how poor the management of the commons. Well here is the thing, in my country the majority of Airbnb rental are(at least were) illegal. Authorities knew this…
The irony of law abiding vigilante drivers beating up regulation abritraging drivers
> The irony of law abiding vigilante drivers beating up regulation abritraging drivers
Who's going to go file a complain? Uber running illegal taxis? Judges looking into this would be delighted for Uber to get a local presence in order for them to file a complain so the police could arrest a few of their executives...
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In this case, a hotel booking site without hotels. It did not start out as a hotel booking service though.
How it started out is irrelevant, how it is today is what matters.
Sometimes you need to break some laws to make progress that does not make it a scam. Sometimes the existing laws hurt consumers breaking such laws is good not bad.
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
What evidence do you having for cheating being only way to remain competitive? What exactly do you mean by cheating?
If I don't pay taxes, I can pass some of those "savings" to the customer, thus beating the competition on price. If you must compete, you must avoid taxes, thus cheat.
So the only way you can compete is by avoiding tax?
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#155So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.
'Social housing' normally forbids subletting. It can get you evicted.
This varies a lot depending on location. In some places private landlords can not (legally) block sub-letting (except of course where it would cause other breaches, for instance health & safety wrt having too many people living in a property) and this carries over to "social housing" that is provided via public/private cooperation schemes.
(NOTE: I'm not intending to imply that it is the case here: I have no idea what the situation is in Amsterdam in this regard)
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#156So essentially 80% were not properly registered and paying taxes? I’m not that surprised, once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way to remain competitive.
> once a good double-digit number are cheating, cheating becomes the only viable way
Good point, but how little oversight does this country have of money being sent to peoples accounts from Airbnb etc? In my country (Norway), all transactions > 500 USD, (or multiple transactions from the same sender of lesser amounts), would register with the tax office. The receiver would have to disclose the source of these transactions to the tax office.
If money coming in or out of peoples accounts are governed by self-reporting, people must pay highly inaccurate taxes in the Netherlands.
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately these people had their chance to learn new ways to earning wages during the pandemic :)
The condescension and lack of humanity that some people here have is baffling.
And you know every single person on this site likes to use their FAANG salaries to see the word, so the hate for tourists is oddly self-referential.
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realize this, even so, for Amsterdam it was a very much needed reprieve.
So you work hard to make your city to become one of the major tourist destinations in the world, who bring in a lot of money and help the local business flourish, and then need a reprieve from that? Kinda counterproductive, no?
At some point the tourism became somewhat self-reinforcing and needed no more inputs from the city itself. However, when every evening you have an unending stream of tourists puking all over the streets, starting fights and bothering locals there is a point where the downsides for the 90% of people in the non-tourism sector become more important than the upsides for the 10% who make their money off tourists. We'll find something else to do for them.
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't especially mind tourists in moderate numbers - after all, from time to time, I play the tourist myself. However, I live and work in Cambridge, and if we were to put what you suggest into practice the city would become an absolutely intolerable place to be for everyone. AirBnb may or may not be a big problem here but, if it is, it's a subset of a bigger problem: buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely…
> buy to let. I'd like to see buy to let severely curtailed within the city, as it's certainly driving up already high prices. I'm familiar with the argument that AirBnB reduces rental stock by devoting it to tourism. But I rarely encounter someone who is mad that more rental stock is being added. Wouldn't you want rental prices to fall by increasing the availability of rental stock? Is a big gap between the cost of…
In the UK housing market, the availability of cheap credit in the buy-to-let market has driven the cost of a home up to levels of unaffordability for the average person. It's made worse by the treatment of housing as an asset class, which means that the traditional solution (build more) has been shown to be ineffective. There is a whole class of people who buy house after house, and make a lot of money out of it, and it drives division in society, as buying is cheaper then renting.
The government has made some moves towards making BTL less profitable, but realistically this has only had the effect of discouraging new entrants, and driving the sector to a corporate model, which is even worse.
Re: Airbnb removes 80% of advertisements in Amsterdam after registration obligation
#160I'd be surprised if a large % of those that no longer rent out on Airbnb can just leave their properties empty. I wonder whether those properties have shifted to other short-term rental platforms or whether they've gone back into long-term renting and what impact that the latter (would) have on the local rental market...
The 20% yoy housing price increases in NL have made it more than profitable to leave properties dormant. This is another factor in the housing crisis here, savings are taxed so wealthy individuals are all investing in property.
Only your primary residence gets to be tax-free in box 1 though? Any other real estate you own falls under box 3 and and is thus subject to the wealth tax ("vermogensbelasting").
See https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/... for details (Dutch page)