Hawaii transient accommodations tax update#
Hawaii transient accommodations tax code#

– (Rates for the neighbor islands may differ!) All rental revenue from rental terms shorter than 180 days(plus cleaning fees collected) is subject to an additional 3% OTAT.

Hawaii transient accommodations tax update#

It’s on the gross rent received, 4.5% General Excise Tax.Ģ.) If you rent your property on a shorter-term basis, that is defined as 180 days or less per tenant, then you’re obligated to pay an additional 10.25% (effective, previously was 9.25%) Transient Accommodation Tax (TAT)ģ) UPDATE effective : OTAT – Oahu Transient Accommodation Tax (Oahu). This is on the gross rent received, not on the rent after expenses, minus expenses. Regardless if you rent your property short term or long term, we need to talk about tax obligations that come along with collecting rental income in Hawaii.ġ.) On all gross rents received you have to pay 4.5% General Excise Tax (GET).

We talked about house rule rental term restrictions which sometimes is 60 days or 90 days minimum per tenant. In a different segment we talked about vacation renting your property and we talked about residential zoning, rental term restrictions which normally is 30 days minimum per tenant.

This is George Krischke with Honolulu HI 5 (company now called Hawaii Living). Takes minutes to set up, and saves tons of time for owners and makes it clear to the guests.Aloha. For Tahoe, we only have a cleaning fee and I check that it's taxable at 10%. It's not me who reports and pays those taxes, so I don't have to itemize them. For Hawaii, I say none of the fees are taxable, and I can price the tax into the fee. Then for each fee we set up, they ask if it's taxable. For us, it's 13.42% in Hawaii and 10% in Tahoe. What VRBO does, they just ask what's your occupancy tax. We also have a rental house in Tahoe and the occupancy tax there is 10%, but that tax applies to both the rent AND any fees we collect up front. Since we don't have properties there, I don't know exactly, but it should be one common number that everyone uses for our particular purpose - to calculate the GET + TAT on transient accommodations. In your case on Oahu, the total rate is probably around 13.97%. Some people asked to do away with this completely, but's that's another issue In my 15-years experience of renting two condos on Maui, nobody ever questioned this number, because it's the same number everyone else is using on Maui. On Maui we just calculate 13.42% (9.25% TAT and 4.166% GET, the sum rounded up to 13.42). It's explained that ' To bridge the gap between what a business collects from their customers and what is payed to the state, many businesses add 4.16% to each sale on the Neighbor Islands and 4.712% to each sale on Oahu.' In this article by tax preparers on Oahu: All we need is to state explicitely the total of the taxes passed on. We don't have to explain to the guest that 'we need to add the GET to the gross total and then tax the sum.'. When I imagine how much time and effort would be saved for all individual owners by just doing in in one central place (such as Airbnb) it's mind boggling. Of course we can solve the deficiency on our own, each private owner spending a few days to research the issuue and to read the Internet, then a few hours to set up our own routine (maybe it's not correct, because we are all reading different sources), and then a few minutes each booking to send that extra clarification to the guest. We have a rental house in Lake Tahoe, and it's very inconvenient to 'price in' the occupancy tax into the Airbnb rates.

Hawaii transient accommodations tax code#

Literally break the Hawaiian tax code by not showing the state tax as a separate charge. It's important not only to Hawaii owners, who I don't understand why Airbnb can't make such a chage in their payment interface. VRBO/HA have the payment interface that allows to do easily specify your occupancy tax and to include it in the quote. If the owner quotes $1134.20 total, which implicitely includes $134.20 tax, this owner would legally own 13.42% of the $1134.20 - $152.21 insted of $134.20. So, for example, if the rent for a rental accommodation on Maui is $1000, the owner must explicitely state $1000 rent + $134.2 Hawaii tax. If you charge your guest or tenant a flat fee without separately stating the GET and the TAT, you are required to pay GET (including the 0.5% county surcharge if the transient accommodation is on Oahu) and TAT on the entire amount.'

The following brochure (edition of 2016): Taxes for transient accommodations in Hawaii are 13.42% (9.25% TAT + 4.1667% GET), only on Oahu GET is higher at 4.712%. Vacation rental owners on Hawaii must specify explicitey how much tax they collect in the quote that that send to the guest. That's required by Hawaii tax department, and it's not possible in Airbnb interface. The problem as I see it as that Airbnb doesn't have an interface to specify the collected taxes separately from rent.