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.