The popular home-sharing application, Airbnb has greeted the announcement made by Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, the Malaysian Tourism and Culture Minister to impose tax on the accommodations of Airbnb going beyond five rooms.Published on : Monday, March 19, 2018
The popular home-sharing application, Airbnb has greeted the announcement made by Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, the Malaysian Tourism and Culture Minister to impose tax on the accommodations of Airbnb going beyond five rooms.
Airbnb South-East Asia head of public policy Mich Goh informed The Malaysian Reserve or TMR that the company will work with in collaboration with government bodies, along with world policymakers to make the process seamless for both hosts as well as guests to pay taxes.
To quote Mich Goh, “Airbnb has been engaging Malaysian authorities for some time, so the announcement is a positive step for our community, as governments around the world are using tax revenue collected from Airbnb to support community programmes, destination marketing efforts, as well as tourism infrastructure.”
Goh further added by saying that Airbnb had sent over US$510 million (RM1.99 billion) in terms of hotel and tourist taxes due to similar agreements made with over 340 jurisdictions worldwide.
She said Airbnb makes sure to offer an updated process to all its hosts and alleviate the burden of administration for the state and local governments by collecting local community taxes and remitting on their behalf.
“In most cases, we accomplish this through our voluntary collection agreement. We actively keep our hosts informed of all regulatory updates,” she said.
Government before turning it a must for all Airbnb accommodations nationwide to register their services and pay tourism taxes, there was a severe protest against the company to be permitted to operate at will.
Malaysian Association of Hotels president Cheah Swee Hee explained that over the last couple of years, unregulated services of Airbnb had impacted the income of the hotel industry by 20 percent.
Cheah found it quite unreasonable that hotels have to obey numerous regulations, while the accommodations of Airbnb could do as they pleased.
Tags: Airbnb Tourism