LOUISVILLE, KY — Airbnb, the world’s leading community driving hospitality company, announced today that it delivered $955,000 in home sharing tax revenue to Louisville Metro in 2018 on behalf of its local host community.
In March 2018, Airbnb and Louisville Metro jointly announced a tax agreement which allowed the home sharing platform to automatically collect the 8.5% transient room tax on behalf of the host community and remit the revenue directly to the city.
The agreement delivered a new revenue stream for the city to capture the tourism benefits of more people visiting and experiencing Louisville thanks to home sharing. The agreement took effect on April 1, 2018, so the $955,000 in revenue was captured in just 9 months.
Collecting and remitting lodging taxes can be complicated and it is for this reason Airbnb has worked with hundreds of governments throughout the world [1] to collect and remit taxes, making the process seamless and easy for hosts while contributing valuable revenue for local comptrollers and tax collectors. Airbnb already works with the Kentucky Department of Revenue to collect and remit state sales taxes on behalf of all hosts throughout the commonwealth. In October 2018, Airbnb
announced that it delivered $2.1 million in tax revenue to DOR in the first year of that agreement, more than doubling initial projections.
Airbnb will release its annual Louisville economic impact report — documenting 2018 guest and host earnings totals — in the coming weeks.
About Airbnb
Founded in 2008, Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong through healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs. Airbnb’s accommodation marketplace provides access to 5+ million unique places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. With experiences, Airbnb offers unprecedented access to local communities and interests through 15,000 unique, handcrafted activities run by hosts across 1,000+ cities around the world. Airbnb’s people-to-people platform benefits all its stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and the communities in which it operates.
