Hoosiers who rent out their homes through platforms such as Airbnb will now have to pay sales and innkeeper’s taxes to the state.
Lawmakers regulated short-term rentals in 2018, but left taxing issues alone until this year. And a bill to tax those rentals stalled until its language was put into the new two-year state budget.
Rep. Matt Lehman (R-Berne), who’s helped lead the General Assembly’s work on the issue, says owners only owe sales and innkeepers taxes if they rent out their property for more than 14 days a year.
“You know, maybe there’s a week that there’s an event and you rent your house out for a couple of days – the whole tax mechanism would have been very difficult, I think, to collect,” Lehman says.
Some sites, like Airbnb, collect the taxes for rental owners. But for those that don’t, the individual owners are responsible for sending the money to the state.
