Airbnb, the world's leading community-driven hospitality company, announced today the company delivered a combined $22.4 million in tax revenue to Tennessee in the first year of its statewide tax agreement, exceeding initial expectations.
In January 2018, Airbnb announced a major agreement with the Tennessee Department of Revenue authorizing the home sharing platform to collect and remit two taxes assessed by the State:
• Tennessee State Sales Tax (7%)
That agreement took effect on March 1, 2018, with initial expectations of $13 million in annual revenue for the state. The $22.4 million nearly doubled those expectations.
In addition to the agreement to collect state and local sales taxes, Airbnb has agreements with Memphis, Knoxville and Hamilton County to collect and remit their local occupancy taxes on behalf of hosts.
"This tax agreement is allowing our hosts and platform to deliver revenue and economic activity to rural parts of Tennessee that lack traditional hospitality options," said Laura Spanjian, Airbnb's senior policy director. "We hope to build on this economic impact in Year 2."
This comes as Tennesseans increasingly embrace the home sharing platform as an opportunity to earn supplemental income and make ends meet. In 2018, local hosts welcomed over 1.4 million Airbnb guest arrivals to Tennessee.
The home sharing community provides significant value through expanded lodging capacity for Tennessee communities when hotels sell out during big events. These include Knoxville during big college football weekends and university events, the Tri-Cities during NASCAR races, and Memphis during the May festival season.
Statewide data indicates that Airbnb and its host community appear to be complementing -- rather than competing with -- the Tennessee hotel industry. The most recent report from the Marcus & Millichap demonstrates that Tennessee hotels continue to thrive, even as local hosts welcomed hundreds of thousands of guests. This suggests that Airbnb is opening up the state to a new slice of prospective tourists by catering to travelers less able to afford hotels, those who desire to stay in neighborhoods or cities that lack hotels, and families who prefer to be together under one roof.
About Airbnb
Founded in 2008, Airbnb exists to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, providing 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 6+ 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 25,000+ unique, handcrafted activities run by hosts across 1,000+ markets around the world. Airbnb's people-to-people platform benefits all its stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and the communities in which it operates.
