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Airbnb to Collect Sales Taxes on Maine Rentals

Short-term rental company Airbnb announced Tuesday that it will start collecting sales taxes from customers in April. That puts the company — and its hosts in Maine — on the same page as Gov. Paul LePage.

LePage says he wants to update the tax code to better account for the burgeoning short-term rental market. The company now says it’s voluntarily agreeing to automatically collect sales taxes on Maine rentals, starting April 1.

“This sort of streamlines the approach. So we’re confident that we’ve done what the governor wanted us to get done which is, in effect, to tax our community and have this done without an administrative burden,” says Andrew Kalloch, a policy director for the company.

Airbnb announced last week that its hosts in Maine earned more than $26 million in 2016. If the sales taxes that apply to most rental lodging in the state had been collected on all those rentals, it would mean well more than $2 million for the state’s treasury.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.