They get to argue their insane "withholding taxes are an illegal barrier to trade" idea all the way to CJEU, lose, continue to refuse to comply, and then have the gall to pretend they're "surprised". Good grief.
What they're doing is knowingly stealing out of the pocket of the taxpayer, and it is deserving of the same attitude you'd have towards a street gang running a protection racket. Just because it's profitable for them to do, doesn't mean it's deserving of respect.
The difference is that their actions here seem within the law? The law allowed them to drag out the process for so long. I wouldn't blame them for doing so.
My argument is that the legislation/regulatory environment is to blame. There should be laws/regulation on the books to discourage/punish/recoup costs of behavior we consider unacceptable.
There absolutely should be reforms to the system to make this impossible, yes. In the meantime, we can discourage this by making them wear it. The decisions Airbnb made as an organization, have shown us all something about the company and the people in charge of it.
If we can't sanction them legally, we at least can sanction their reputation.
Because apparently the law says so? Rent income is already taxed at a flat rate (at a relatively generous 21%) as opposed of using the marginal tax rate.
Also VAT and sale taxes are commonly withheld at payment. In UK it was the rule until a few years ago for banks to withhold tax on interest income.
Huh, is it not anymore? I thought virtually everywhere did that; I'd expect compliance to be _extremely_ low where it's not done.
Banks share information with HMRC, so I expect that compliance is still high, but it is a bit annoying that our tax returns are not prefilled with this info.
Even VAT is a withholding scheme at heart, which makes your restaurant example kind of funny :) The VAT on that meal you eat at a restaurant is paid by you as the consumer, but collected and paid to the tax authorities (i.e. withheld) by the restaurant.
Isnt AirBnB like the delivery driver in this situation? DoorDash, in America for example, collects the tax for the food, passes it to the restaurant, who pays their own tax.
Isn't AirBnB giving the collected tax money to the homeowner so they can pay correctly?
I have no clue how it works over the pond so apologies if these are dumb questions.
But this case is not about VAT, but a rental tax. If Airbnb collects the money then I don't see why they wouldn't just pay the tax. I mean I know why - they don't want to include it in the price and make their product artificially cheaper by ignoring regulation, but tough luck.
The delivery company pays VAT for the food and can substract that from their own VAT liabilities.
In a strict B2B context it's also possible to do a net payment and that's why some (EU) stores will ask if you have valid tax id.
In Italy it is a rather common occurrence in different fields to be required by Law to act as "sostituto d'imposta" (loosely translatable to "tax substitute", the real translation should be "witholding agent"), as an example banks when you pay through them certain types of services, or hotels when you pay the "city tax" for your stay, or firms hiring a consultant.
The taxes are witheld and then paid directly to the revenue service (periodically), the idea is that instead of receiving millions or billions of small payments, the state receives much less larger (cumulative) payments.
If we take as an example the city (tourist) tax, each customer should pay (say) 2 Euro for each night they stay in a hotel (or AirBnB), a (fully occupied) hotel with 200 beds would generate 200 small payments, 2 Euro each, per day, instead the hotel collects them (in name of the state) and pays in a single instance every three months, so instead of 3x200x30=18,000 micro payments, only one payment/transaction is generated.
They are facing a lot of tax evasion from landlords. On the other hand, all the money flows through AirBnb so making AirBnb withhold tax is the simplest and most effective option from the government's point of view.