The Ile d’Oléron, in the west of France, is claiming nearly 30 million euros from Airbnb for failure to collect the tourist tax in 2020 and 2021, the latest disappointment for the housing rental platform in France.
The island’s community of municipalities criticizes the tourist rental platform for not having made a “declaration relating to the tourist tax” the first year, then produced an “incomplete and erroneous” declaration the next, in a summons before justice consulted Monday by AFP.
Airbnb Ireland (the company’s European headquarters located in Dublin) is summoned to appear on April 25 before the La Rochelle court, to which the community of municipalities asks to order the platform to pay four civil fines of one total amount of 29.7 million euros, as revealed on Sunday by the newspaper Le Figaro.
This amount corresponds to the maximum fine provided for by the Local Authorities Code in the event of failure to pay the tourist tax, i.e. 2,500 euros, multiplied by the number of stays concerned over the period (nearly 12,000).
The Île d’Oléron community had already demanded from Airbnb the payment of more than 400,000 euros in respect of taxes not paid in 2020 and 2021, a sum which the platform paid last September following a first arm wrestling match. .
But the community of communes does not want to stop there. “Airbnb cannot be satisfied with making a payment of what was due”, considers its lawyer, Me Jonathan Bellaïche. “This does not sanction non-collection and non-declaration”, he adds, while “the law provides for sanctions” in this case.
“The problem came from a technical error and was solved last year as soon as we were informed. All identified under-collected amounts have already been paid, with legal interest on arrears,” reacted Monday in an Airbnb press release.
With this summons, which the platform claims not to have received yet, the community wants to set an example, because its case is not unique, according to its president, Michel Parent. “Several communities of municipalities asked us to find out how we had been able to recover the sum from previous years,” he explains.
On January 17, following a summons from the same elected officials from Oléron, another tourist rental platform, Booking, was ordered by the La Rochelle court to communicate the number of nights reserved on the island by its intermediary in 2020 and 2021. The community also accuses him of similar shortcomings.
On January 13, Airbnb announced that it had paid 148 million euros in tourist tax to French municipalities in 2022, an amount up 60% compared to the previous year.
At the beginning of January, the French courts had confirmed the conviction of Airbnb in the offense committed by a Parisian tenant, who had illegally sublet her accommodation.
