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Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

ft.com

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Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#31

Post by DanBC »

dmix wrote: post #12
jostmey wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should be asking why some industries are heavily taxed and others are not

Just look how successful the products are (not talking about the companies) without heavy government intervention. Both of those would not exist if they had followed laws designed a (half?) century ago for different types of businesses. And customers love those services. Rather than finding a common working ground that keeps customers happy that outnumber those unhappy with it by 100:1 and instead updates laws like i…

> And customers love those services.

Until they die in a fire in a building that doesn't follow fire code; or are seriously injured in a possibly uninsured Uber[1] car.

[1] Uber provides insurance to US drivers. I don't think they provide it anywhere else.

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#33

Post by stale2002 »

logicallee wrote: post #24
jdavis703 wrote: post #22

Hotels are heavily taxed because tourists and business travellers can't vote. In many cases cities like London and NYC are non-fungible goods, so if you want to go there you just have to pay the taxes. If they ever get high enough that hotels can't book rooms, the businesses should lobby the government to lower them.

could you add in your analysis of airbnb or how it relates to what you've written - you've left it entirely out of your paragraph and I can't draw an immediate conclusion. (Though maybe you were adding information about hotel taxation without any thoughts about airbnb or how it relates.)

It is related to AirBnB because there is an argument that the tax is unfair to consumers to begin with.

It is designed to screw over foreigners.

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#34

Post by baddox »

wmeredith wrote: post #20
dmix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look how successful the products are (not talking about the companies) without heavy government intervention. Both of those would not exist if they had followed laws designed a (half?) century ago for different types of businesses. And customers love those services. Rather than finding a common working ground that keeps customers happy that outnumber those unhappy with it by 100:1 and instead updates laws like i…

Customers love Uber because it's prices are currently subsidized by VC money. Once that goes away, we'll see how competitive they are.

Are there any good sources for Uber's unit costs versus prices? I would be surprised if all rides in all markets are subsidized by VC money. I would expect most of the VC money is being spent on expansion (more cities and more drivers) and that Uber service is actually profitable in mature markets. There are several articles claiming that Uber is profitable in the US.

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#35

Post by rayiner »

jostmey wrote: post #9
darpa_escapee wrote: post #4

It's almost as if AirBnB, Uber et al get by on skirting the law other people have to follow.

Maybe we should be asking why some industries are heavily taxed and others are not

Taxing the hospitality industry is a way for a municipality to shift the tax burden from residents to visitors.

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#36

Post by throwaway_45 »

jostmey wrote: post #9
darpa_escapee wrote: post #4

It's almost as if AirBnB, Uber et al get by on skirting the law other people have to follow.

Maybe we should be asking why some industries are heavily taxed and others are not

Because we live in a first world country. Taxes pay for that. That include hotel and taxi taxes.

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#37

Post by [deleted] »

digitaltrees wrote: post #29
dmix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look how successful the products are (not talking about the companies) without heavy government intervention. Both of those would not exist if they had followed laws designed a (half?) century ago for different types of businesses. And customers love those services. Rather than finding a common working ground that keeps customers happy that outnumber those unhappy with it by 100:1 and instead updates laws like i…

So are you saying we should get rid of any regulation where "customers love a service" that doesn't follow the regulation? So we should allow a contract killer for hire on-line marketplace because drug cartels would really love to book their preferred hit man from an iPhone app?

[deleted]

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#38

Post by eloff »

digitaltrees wrote: post #29
dmix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look how successful the products are (not talking about the companies) without heavy government intervention. Both of those would not exist if they had followed laws designed a (half?) century ago for different types of businesses. And customers love those services. Rather than finding a common working ground that keeps customers happy that outnumber those unhappy with it by 100:1 and instead updates laws like i…

So are you saying we should get rid of any regulation where "customers love a service" that doesn't follow the regulation? So we should allow a contract killer for hire on-line marketplace because drug cartels would really love to book their preferred hit man from an iPhone app?

Slippery-slope fallacy. Revising regulation to strike a balance between no regulation and existing regulations to allow services like AirBnB and Uber does not have a causative link to creating a contract-for-hire market for killers...

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#39

Post by szx »

ceejayoz wrote: post #2

This is a bit of a deceptive headline. The immediate sub-headline is "Up to third of price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment, FT finds", which is a pretty massive difference. (Side note: Usual "Google the headline" trick works on FT.com's paywall)

FYI, HN's handy little "web" link, below the title, does exactly that (i.e. Google the headline)

Re: Up to a third of Airbnb's price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment

#40

Post by wyager »

mdorazio wrote: post #13
wyager wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Skirting the law" is loaded language that makes it sound as though they are doing something illegal. They are not. It's true, though; the reason companies like AirBnB and Uber are so vastly superior to the entrenched competition is that they don't have to deal with all the ridiculous and pointless red tape that makes taxis so horrendous and American hotels so insanely expensive. I'm not sure how anyone can recognize…

Which hotel regulations do you think are overly onerous and ridiculous? Most of those regulations were put in place to protect communities and customers, not the hotels themselves. Zoning laws prevent tourists from overrunning resident communities where people don't want them. Safety and health regulations ensure that customers won't get injured or sick during their stay. Taxes help cities pay for all the improvement…

> Most of those regulations were put in place to protect communities and customers

I don't have much of an issue with communities using zoning rules to prevent AirBnBing. That's a separate issue from top-down hotel regulations.

The cost of "protecting" me from hotels is several orders of magnitude higher than the value I get from these "protections". Of course, most of the cost of hotel regulation is hotel taxes (which are big revenue sources for tourist destinations and have nothing to do with hotel safety) and bureaucracy. The claim that all regulations have something to do with safety is popular among proponents of a given regulation, but of course it's manifestly false.

> Safety and health regulations ensure that customers won't get injured or sick during their stay.

I think you're putting a bit too much stock in the effectiveness of regulation; in particular, municipal health authorities taking your money does not make you immune from disease. I'm also quite capable of looking at something and telling if it's dirty, which is the process I use both for my own household and for AirBnBs. It seems to work quite well (and inexpensively).

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