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The City of Bonavista has taken a new approach to dealing with airbnb hosts who represent unfair competition for hotels and bread-and-breakfast ins because they don't pay business taxes. They cut your sewer and water lines.
Bonavista cuts off services for Airbnb operators with unpaid business tax bills.
"We have gone to some pretty serious measures to collect. We have literally dug up driveways and turned off water (and) sewer service until the bill is paid, cutting them off completely from all municipal services.
-- Mayor John Norman
If people can't even drive their car onto your property, take a shower, use the toilet, you're pretty motivated to pony up.
The mayor said the taxation method has been successful, but he acknowledges not all Airbnb owners are pleased.
"I don't think some are happy about it, but it is what it is."
This is a pretty effective fix to unfair competition by airbnb hosts. The next question is, how can we apply the same thinking to uber and lyft?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:41PM (10 children)
And if the town hadn't pursued these taxes (not just against the Airbnb folk, but also normal businesses!) there wouldn't have been a problem either.
The town isn't entitled to know your income or invent permits for you to pay either. I find it remarkable how you ignore how intrusive this all is.
If taxes and zoning are so shitty that this works, then Vancouver needs to do a lot more than just obsess over this Emanuel Goldstein. They need more hotels and such and some sane zoning law too. Airbnb can be a great help in working around this damage. Sounds like they already are despite the few alleged victims.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @12:02AM (5 children)
Libtards (libertarian retards) rant against taxes but want the benefits. You scream human rights violations but without taxes there's no legal system to pursue human rights violations. You talk big about lawsuits from this but without taxes there's no justice system to file a lawsuit with.
If you can't even troll properly, can't you at least try to be funny?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @03:27AM (4 children)
And as the story shows, taxes also pay for thugs to shut down your property with a backhoe. Let us sing of the benefits of civilization!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @03:44PM (3 children)
Nothing quite like taking a Cat 966 and scooping up and burying a station wagon in the field after the owner has been warned repeatedly not to park there! The dirt bucket digs a really nice car grave. Dump it in the hole, drive over it a few times to crush it, bury it, smooth it over, and the job is done. 10 minutes of fun. Should have run over it with one of the D9s in the lot first, though. Or just run over it and left it in plain view. Even the engine block would have shattered under that much weight.
Or burying a car that is parked under a no parking sign for the upteenth time under 10 tons of snow and ice and them losing their front end when they try to have it towed out.
Self-entitled shitheads often deserve everything they're asking for.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)
Who here is surprised?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @11:00PM (1 child)
You've probably never even operated heavy machinery. One of my daught, barely 5'1", 105 pounds, drove a tractor for a decade. She makes you look like a wimp.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @11:32PM
Anything I'm uniformly opposed to would, of course, be a good enough reason for me oppose specific instances. By tautology. Sounds like you'll need to refine that question a bit.
And my take is that economic freedom is far more important than whatever weird thing you have against Airbnb. It's amazing how much tyranny has been excused here merely because it hypothetically helps the trains run on time.
I don't agree that these games are remotely needed to protect Bonavista's tax base (keep in mind that the alleged Airbnb businesses are paying taxes, just not as much as the town would like!) or apartment dwellers in Vancouver. Nor do I agree that taxing foreign investors is a sane idea or that people could live in apartments with the right onerous regulation - after all, how are you going to force landlords to make more apartments and maintain the ones they already have, if they're losing money? It's just more dumb ideas from people who have never gotten an economy to work on their own.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @12:07AM (3 children)
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @03:40AM (2 children)
They just keep digging the hole deeper. A huge part of this whole problem is taxing without representation. I'm familiar, having lived in a number of places where tourists frequent, on the near universal exploitation of these tourists with taxes on lodging and such. Sorry, it's not right. I don't buy that tourists use more resources than the locals. It's just a wealth transfer because the city can.
Similarly, we see Vancouver feeding like a tapeworm on external investors. The whole thing is profoundly stupid. My bet is that if this really is a genuine, implemented policy, it'll backfire spectacularly.
Maybe. This whole Vancouver thing sounds remarkably retarded. It's partially legal, but surely, they could do some credible land ownership reform rather than tilt at the Airbnb windmill? I'd start by looking at the zoning and hotel markets. Someone has fucked up there, if they're having this kind of supposed trouble with Airbnb.
It strikes me that a solution to this problem is simply to revoke Vancouver and other cities's ability to do these sorts of things.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 13 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)
We're in an election campaign, and Prime Minister Trudeau has announced he will impose a 1% buyers tax on all foreign home buyers.
Foreign buyers taxes work. If you're only going to be using the home for a few weeks a year, you're not supporting the local economy, which is how the roads get paved and repaired, the traffic lights keep working, and the police keep getting paid to keep vandals from squatting in your pied-a-terre.
A 15% tax on new foreign buyers is fair. Some places, such as New Zealand, have put an outright ban on new foreign buyers, so the rich had better stop counting on fleeing there in the event of a nuclear war and start actively trying to avoid one, even if it means they make less money off war industries.
You're not a resident, you don't get representation. Don't like it, vote with your money by buying elsewhere (which is what the law is designed to encourage you to do). Block after block of housing that looks abandoned for most of the year is a huge burden - they've also imposed an additional annual tax on homes that don't have permanent residents living in them. Guess what - those homes quickly got rented out to full-time renters at below market value just to avoid the tax.
Taxation can lead to greater availability of housing stock, and this demonstrates it. Don't be surprised if more cities around the world copy it.
You're not a resident - why should anyone care what you think? The neighbours don't want you living there 1 or 2 weeks a year and leaving a hollow shell the rest of the time. Same as someone living in New York doesn't give a shit what you think if you don't live in New York.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 13 2019, @09:57PM
What are you even trying to fix? I see some talk about creating more available housing, but nothing about how this tax is supposed to do anything for that.
Let us also note that the tax is very easy to bypass. Just have some local front the thing.
Except of course when you're using the home for a few weeks a year, which may well be more support for the local economy than some schmoe living there at below market rate.
For who? You're just looking at it.
Even if this tax were a good idea, it doesn't sound like a foreign owners tax to me. More like a non sequitur. But I suppose if we put a 15% tax on non sequiturs, it would, no doubt, make housing more affordable.
We didn't need that investment in our future anyway, right?
Because they might want to do something for the future of their city or society instead.
My view on this whole thing is that it's the use of regulation to enforce a terrible business model. It's not just existing hotels protecting their market, it's a bunch of people protecting the valuation of their real estate assets by driving out affordable housing.
Apparently, the neighbors do want those taxes though that come from the one or two weeks a year the property is in use. Can't have it both ways.