New Arizona law requires tax license number to be included in short-term rental ads
- Jun 11, 2019 | Jennifer Sokolowsky
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has signed a bill that requires short-term rental hosts to include a lodging tax license number in all advertisements.
The new law, which goes into effect August 27, 2019, requires short-term rental operators to hold a current transaction privilege tax (TPT) license before offering up a vacation rental to guests. That license number must be included in all ads. Hosts who break these rules face fines of $250 for a first offense and $1,000 for a second.
The new ordinance also prohibits short-term rentals from hosting special events that would normally require a permit, such as large parties. And it allows municipalities to require short-term rental owners to provide contact information for someone who can respond to complaints about the short-term rental in a timely manner.
Under the new bill, the Department of Revenue is also authorized to impose fines ranging from $500 to $1,500 on any short-term rental hosts who receive citations from a city or county for violating vacation-rental use laws.
The bill amends legislation that went into effect in 2017 prohibiting cities, towns, and counties from restricting short-term rentals. Advocates lobbying for the bill complained that proliferating short-term rentals were becoming nuisances with loud parties and other unneighborly behavior.
The number of short-term rentals has skyrocketed over the past five years, according to data from research firm AirDNA. Between 2014 and this year, the number of short-term rentals in Phoenix grew from 867 to 4,224. As of March of this year, Scottsdale was home to 5,369 vacation rentals, and Sedona had 2,095 short-term rental properties.
In Arizona, short-term rental operators are required to collect state transaction privilege tax, county excise tax, and local transient occupancy from their guests and remit it to tax authorities.
The state requires all short-term rental online marketplaces, such as Airbnb and VRBO, to collect and remit state and local taxes on Arizona short-term rentals, according to a law that went into effect at the beginning of this year. Previously, Airbnb was the only online marketplace that collected taxes on short-term rentals booked through its platform, as a result of a voluntary agreement reached with the state in 2017.
MyLodgeTax can help short-term rental operators comply with Arizona lodging tax registration, collection, and filing requirements. For more on Arizona lodging taxes, see our state Vacation Rental Tax Guide
