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French MPs vote to make Airbnb 'professionals' pay tax

The Local France
The Local France - [email protected]
French MPs vote to make Airbnb 'professionals' pay tax
Photo: AFP

Those who rent their homes on Airbnb or their cars on the site Drivy will have to pay their fair share of tax, French MPs have decided.

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Lawmakers in France voted this week that those who use sharing economy websites like Airbnb and Drivy to make money, must be treated as "professionals" and therefore pay the tax man.

However a cap will be put in place meaning the vote only really spells bad news for those who rent out their apartments or their car for most of the year.

Those who rent out their apartments when they are holiday or when they go away for a weekend should not be affected given that the income threshold will be fairly high.

For those renting apartments on sites like Airbnb the cap will be set at €23,000 a year and for those renting out cars or boats on sites like Drivy the threshold will be €7,720.

The government’s goal is to fight against unfair competition that the likes of the French hotel industry have long complained about.

UMIH a union representing the hotel industry had called for greater equality between those that provide lodging and also that sites like Airbnb automatically transfer details of transactions to the French tax man.

Paulin Dementhon, the founder of Drivy, known as Airbnb for cars, was disappointed with the vote and said there needed to be a clear distinction between those who use the sites as way of sharing the cost of their car or house and those who do it to make money.

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