airbnb logo app
The Airbnb Inc. logo and application -- both recently redesigned -- are displayed on an Apple Inc. iPhone and iPad in this arranged photograph.
(Bloomberg)
Even though Airbnb has agreed to collect lodging taxes on behalf of users who rent rooms in their Portland homes, the city won't get those users' names and addresses. Instead, it will just get a single return, as though Airbnb were a single 1,600-room hotel.
As the city moves to legalize and regulate Airbnb-style short term rentals, the arrangement reached with the city's revenue bureau takes away one tool to enforce the new regulations it's putting in place.
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Without identifying information on lodging tax returns, the city won't be able to use the tax receipts to determine which users are renting out out rooms without a permit.
Some of those users might simply be unaware of the new laws around short-term rentals. Others could ignore them because their rental wouldn't be allowed even under the new city rules. That could include whole-home rentals, banned because of their potential impact on the long-term rental supply, or because a rental doesn't meet safety requirements.
The agreement was released to The Oregonian on Friday under a public records request. It's the first such agreement Airbnb has reached with a U.S. city, although Airbnb is working on a similar pact with San Francisco.
The agreement specifies that Airbnb won't release identifying information on users as a matter of course — only for audits and specific complaints.
Airbnb's website lists hundreds of "entire place" rentals that, even under the city's proposal, wouldn't be allowed. City code enforcement officials have said that there are listings on the site that appear in promotional photos to violate even basic safety rules, like adequate fire escape routes.
Under the current system, some operators of short-term rentals pay the lodging taxes the city says they owe, but many don't. The city has had little recourse for pursuing those who don't pay the taxes because Airbnb's website — in an understandable nod to privacy concerns — obscures full names and exact addresses.
It also hasn't actively pursued those who paid taxes but haven't gone through the costly and time consuming process of obtaining a conditional use permit for their miniature bed-and-breakfast. Although most such operations operate in violation of city code, the Bureau of Development Services has only pursued cases instigated by a complaint. It has occasionally sent out warning letters or leveled fines.
Automatic tax collections would have given the city a comprehensive look at who's using Airbnb, only one of several online room-rental facilitators, but one with more than 1,600 registered hosts in Portland.
"If we were given a list, we could on some level make sure everyone was complying with the requirement to pull a permit," said Mike Liefeld, enforcement program manager for city.
But Terri Williams, the city's tax division manager, said getting identifying information as though the operators were remitting the taxes themselves was never part of discussions with Airbnb. She said she didn't know why.
"I don't know if I have a good answer for that," Williams said.
Airbnb would turn over some information — potentially anonymous ID numbers — during a tax division audit, which Williams says it conducts for most hotels every three years. For Airbnb, the equivalent of a hotel more than twice the size of Portland's largest, those audits would be more frequent.
But the city uses sampling, so only a small amount of data would be turned over — one day's worth, perhaps.
Airbnb has worked closely with the city as Portland has shaped its policies on short-term rentals, meeting with members of the city planning commission and the city council.
And in the middle of the debate, it also announced it would open a customer service center in Portland's Old Town, a highlight of Mayor Charlie Hales' State of the City address. Shortly thereafter, it declared Portland its first "Shared City," another initiative on which the company worked closely with Hales.
"Over the past few months, we had productive discussions with Portland officials and reached an agreement to voluntarily collect city and county taxes from guests on behalf of hosts," a statement from the company said. "This agreement strives to make the process simple and keep personal taxpayer information confidential."
Parts of the tax agreement provided to The Oregonian are heavily redacted. Abby Coppock, spokeswoman for the city's Office of Management and Finance, said the redactions were made under an exemption to public records law that protects trade secrets.
-- Elliot Njus