Vent: Got banned from a travel forum for saying Airbnb hosts should pay taxes like hotels

Overheard a property manager at a coffee shop in Austin bragging about how they skirt local lodging taxes and call it 'creative accounting', so I posted about it and within 5 hours the mods locked my thread and perma-banned me for 'promoting negative discourse' - anyone else run into this weird protection of short-term rental folks online?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ben25d ago

Heard that too, and I get why you're mad, but honestly I think a lot of those platforms are just catching up to rules that already exist and it's not some big conspiracy to protect them. Most cities just haven't figured out how to enforce the laws yet.

reese8625d agoMost Upvoted

Funny you mention that, my buddy runs a small landscaping crew and got hit with a surprise fine last month. He'd been operating the same way for years, never had a problem, then the city suddenly decided his truck was too heavy for some residential street. Thing is, the law was always on the books from like the 80s, they just never bothered enforcing it until some new zoning guy got hired. He had to spend a whole weekend re-routing his schedule and paying for a permit he didn't even know existed. It's not like the platforms are getting special treatment, it's more that the city is finally waking up and actually reading their own rulebook, you know? Makes you wonder how many other outdated laws are just sitting there waiting to be used.