The Auckland Council has given the green light to Mayor Phil Goff’s ‘build-it Budget’ which includes a bed tax targeted at Airbnb hosts.
In the Budget, Airbnb hosts who have paid guests staying over 29 days a year will have to pay additional rates. The ‘build-it’ budget will classify homes or apartments rented out for more than six months of a year as fully-fledged accommodation businesses, and will be made to pay full hotel rates. Goff clarified that the rates increase will differ depending on how many days and how many rooms are leased out.
“For say 29 to 135 days they’d be paying a quarter of the business rate and three-quarters of the residential rate. For guests staying over 180 days a year it’s obviously a business, and it would be treated like a business,” Goff said.
"If you're letting out for less than four weeks you're not covered, if it is for over 180 days you'll be paying the full business rate and in between there are graduations."
A Deloitte report showed Airbnb guests in 2017 spent more than $781 million in New Zealand, supporting more than 6,000 jobs around the country, including 1,976 in Auckland alone.
New Zealand had a total of 1.4 million Airbnb guest nights in 2017
“Airbnb is an economic shot in the arm for family budgets and local communities across New Zealand. The Airbnb community is helping locals earn extra income, turbocharge the economy and create more local jobs,” Brent Thomas, Airbnb’s head of public policy Australia and New Zealand said.
“Airbnb’s kind of healthy, sustainable travel spreads the benefits of tourism to the places that have traditionally missed out, like the regions. More than two-thirds of Airbnb’s economic activity occurs outside Auckland and 74 cents in the Airbnb guest dollar goes into the local community - local shops, cafes and restaurants.”
