(Photo by Dion Ogust)
Ulster County recently saw the completion of a “data mining” expedition into short-term rentals by a third party company hired last spring, and is currently sending out notices to all Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway and other such hosts reminding them about the county occupancy taxes they owe.
“We now have a detailed list and are starting to get in touch with those towns that have the most short term rentals, like Woodstock,” noted Deputy County Executive Ken Crannell.
He added that county Commissioner of Finance Burt Gulnick was “in the process” of getting occupancy tax letters out. Furthermore, Crannell noted that the county planning department was preparing to reach out to towns, starting with Woodstock, to provide assistance as they upgrade their zoning laws and prepare their planning boards for dealing with the effects of the short term rental explosion of recent years.
The new efforts were announced in March by county executive Michael Hein as a “Comprehensive Plan To Assist Local Municipalities, Ensure Public Safety And Promote A Level Playing Field With The Growing Short Term Vacation Rental Market.
In that March 19 press announcement, the County noted that “the plan is designed to improve equity and compliance with local health and safety guidelines as well as compliance with Ulster County’s Occupancy Tax, which is used exclusively to promote local tourism. Additionally, it is designed to enhance ‘fairness’ with traditional lodging businesses by standardizing requirements…The addition of short term rentals that primarily market through online hosting platforms creates a concern because not all lodging providers are compliant with local zoning, health and safety rules, as well as state and local tax requirements.”
The first step of Hein’s plan involved the hiring of a third-party company to come up with detailed lists of all short term rentals in the county, to be made available to individuals towns, villages and other municipalities.
That list is also being used by the county, via Gulnick’s finance department, to ensure that “anyone who regularly offers lodging on an overnight basis, including properties typically listed on Internet sites such as Airbnb, HomeAway and VRBO, register with the Ulster County Department of Finance as well as remit a 2 percent occupancy tax.”
“Unfortunately, online service providers and hundreds of other vacation rental websites do not disclose the names of clients who are providing these short term rentals making it difficult for the County to ensure that providers are compliant with the existing Tax Law,” the original March press release went on. “Additionally, the Department of Finance will use this tool to help automate their administrative process and also provide an online portal for short term rental operators to easily register and ensure their compliance with the Tax Law.”
Rejecting voluntary agreements
In Spring, 2017, as other counties in the Hudson Valley and throughout the nation implemented voluntary occupancy tax agreements with Airbnb and some of the other large short term rental platforms, Ulster County officials fought over their own policies. County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach pushed for an agreement with Airbnb, at least, while County Legislature Chairman Ken Ronk countered that such a route did not properly take into account actual provisions of the county’s standing occupancy or “bed” tax.
“It’s all about making the playing field level,” Ronk said this week, noting that not all short term rentals would be paying taxes if left on a voluntary basis, as Airbnb had worked out with a number of other counties in the state. “I never supported that voluntary Airbnb platform.”
Once the county Finance Department gets its current paperwork and tax notices out to the county’s short term rental hosts, the county plan’s final step will be the development of a campaign to inform all short term rental hosts “with regard to various municipal health and safety rules and the steps that are needed to be in compliance with the Tax Law.” That effort will be accomplished in tandem with the Ulster County Lodging Coalition.
Woodstock’s efforts coordinated
with the county
On a more localized basis, Crannell said that the county has started working with Woodstock in the finalization of its own zoning ordinance updates to accommodate the short-term rental boom.
Woodstock councilman Richard Heppner, who has chaired a special committee on short term rentals for the town of Woodstock over the past year, said this week that the town recently sent its recommendations for zoning changes regarding the phenomenon are currently in the Woodstock planning board’s hands.
“We’re now waiting on them for their recommendations regarding language,” he said. “We’ll probably pick it up next week.”
The Planning Board discussed the town’s changes at its August 3 meeting.
This will be of great help to townships with active online derived short term transient rentals. The health and safety issues are paramount to government responsibility. Also the nuisance factor that can happen with short term rentals where the people staying in them don’t have any connection to community so don’t care as to creating impacts on neighborhoods.
The list of such rentals will be an immense help to towns enforcing a regime of safety as they get a zoning code in place to handle the AirBnB type issues.
Thanks to our UC Executive, Mike Hein for acting on this growing concern.
Applaud the County’s efforts to properly tax short term rentals. As someone who Airbnbs, this will clear the path for clean finances without an undue burden on the home owners. We do however insist that all other forms of lodging be on a level playing field. They need to be denied tax incentives and all marketing and infrastructure services the County provides for them need to stop or include the Airbnb crowd.
What don’t people want to tax? Hotels and Motels are commercial multi-residential properties. Comparing them to renting out one’s home, where they have their own homeowner’s insurance, and a multi-billion dollar company like airbnb, that provides $1mm dollar insurance policy for renters, is bananas.
We already pay some of the highest property taxes in the country, and what does Ulster county provide? Nothing, I have a well, a septic system, and propane tanks. They provide almost nothing for a 4.3% property tax rate vs 1 lercent legal maximum in states like WA and CA. Why people think taxing everything is a great idea is beyond me. I already pay tax on the rental invome when i rent out my house, on a schedule E. And I pay property taxes; school txaes. And now the R in congress have removed our ability to deduct SALT(state and local taxes), so the tax burden on the income producing states like NY and CA becomes even higher. We also have a high sales tax and absurdly high state income tax. most sttes either have a sales tax or an income tax, not both. There are way too many laters of government and way too much corruption in NY state government. Until they can clean up thwir act, we ahould not give any layer of state or loacl government one more penny.
If you think that some toothless little county government’s dumb little fire extinqiisher permit process is going to make anyone safer, or generate any actual growth to our areas coffers, you are insane. It will likely just make things more difficult and people will just list on craiglsist etc. without the safety of the peer reviewed social network that airbnb allows for vetting renters. No such thing exists for motels and hotels for their customers.
Why don’t people stop wasting their time trying to control and tax everything, and apprecite the increase in prop tax revenues, and property values, and miliions and millions of tourist $$ that come in. Because when the economy goes down, maybe sullivan county stops taxing, and maybe people go there instead.
Your neighborhoods are in decline because instead of modernizing your economies you have insisted on refusing to adapt, losing your brughtest and best to nyc and other cities that invest in education and modernizing economies. And instead prefer to piss and moan and vote for idiots like Faso and that orange baboon we have for a president.
Thank you. I totally agree.
We are taxed to death in NY and N.J.
I think this new tax is another attempt at bleeding taxpayers. If a person wants to rent their private residence, it’s their right. As always happens with the approval of a new tax, the next will be sales tax on monthly rental income, for local renters. This liberal, left wing, tax everyone and every action mentality needs to stop. People seem to not realize the absurdity of our societies over taxation. Men fought, and died for our freedom from taxation and government domination but with each choice to add another layer of laws and ‘government domination’ we loose piece by piece all they strived to do. Hein and the legislature that support increasing taxes should be embarrassed. Remember this at the next election!
Excuse me but it was the republican congress who took away our SALT deduction. A far bigger deal than this 2% tax…and yet to you it is the ‘liberal left wing” that is bothering you.
Can you put your obvious biases aside and can’t we just all be mad about this situation without you stretching the truth to make your point?