Air BnB [and other platforms] to be effectively outlawed in high demand areas

L1011

Fan of Netflix wrote: »

If it was up to me AirBnB and other rogue landlords would have their property seized by the state and redistributed to those in need of social housing. FG don't have the balls to do it.

Or the constitutional ability.

Fan of Netflix

Carlos Slow Traitor wrote: »

Ha ha, that’s a lot of nonsense for one paragraph.

Us multiantions stealing the wealth of our people being one of the highlights, considering they are an absolutely crucial part of our economy, provide massive employment and provide a large number of our highly skilled/highly paid jobs.

I can tell you one thing for sure, there is no one working in multinationals that are homeless.

You seem to have issues understanding US multinational tax avoidance such as the 14bn from Apple. Indeed you cannot even spell multinational so it's unlikely to be worth my time discussing these issues further. As for your last line, well it speaks for itself.

Graham

Mod Note

Fan of Netflix, quit the snarky/trolling posts please.

GGTrek

CoffeeBean2 wrote: »

Spot on, we should take from those that have, and give to those that haven't.

Those that formally had should be publicly punished. And those that formally didn't have, but now have due to the redistribution, should also be publicly punished. Punishment all around I say, who's with me?

And for that one poster who can't spot sarcasm ^^^

It is unfortunate that one poster is a moderator of this forum.

L1011

GGTrek wrote: »

It is unfortunate that one poster is a moderator of this forum.

If you have a problem with moderation, you take it to Feedback. Further discussion of this - by anyone - will be actioned.

This is a serious forum, it has to be taken that posts are serious and not randomly switching to "light hearted" or "sarcasm" part way through

Fan of Netflix

Fan of Netflix wrote: »

You seem to have issues understanding US multinational tax avoidance such as the 14bn from Apple. Indeed you cannot even spell multinational so it's unlikely to be worth my time discussing these issues further. As for your last line, well it speaks for itself.

That money will rightly be given back to Apple after the case is won. It’s more incentives we should be giving multinationals to open here or expand here not taking them away.

You have very very little concept of things I’m afraid though going by your outlandish far left rambling.

As for my last line, yes it does speak for itself. People in good jobs working for good employers are able to house themselves while also paying large amounts of tax to house those who don’t work.

the_syco

dontparkhere wrote: »

I am beginning to ramble, I am not a landlord it is my own home

Do you live in said house?

Edgware

Mod Note.
Do not discuss ways around the law please.
If you’d like to PM me a legal way to carry out what you do then please feel free to do so.

kceire

Fan of Netflix

Edgware wrote: »

Snip

Bragging about criminality on here isn't the best idea. I'll have to start reporting to the council.

dontparkhere

the_syco wrote: »

Do you live in said house?

Yes

Samuel T. Cogley

In fairness all you have to do is specifiy a minimum 14 day stay.

Dav010

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

In fairness all you have to do is specifiy a minimum 14 day stay.

Just as there is a difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal), personally I would appreciate any advice about ways around this law which are legal. If they are indeed legal, then accusations that it promotes illegal activity are baseless.

Dav13579

I was at a stag at the weekend and met a college friend from years back who now works in revenue.
So since I and another guy at the stag are both former landlords now renting through Airbnb because of all the legislation, red tape, taxation and so on (I wont bore you with the detail), we had a long conversation with him about this new Airbnb legislation.
He had a lot to say on it as he is involved in investigations for fraud in revenue so might end up on that project. HE said they have already had many meetings about what might happen in revenue and they all end up with much laughter.

He told us it is a farce and that we shouldn't bother even giving it a second thought if we want to remain doing Airbnb as the chances of anything happening to us are so slim. He actually said he figured one of us would win the lottery before we come to any kind of meaningful punishment for doing Airbnb.

Now needless to say I asked for more detail which he did go into for me which i'll summarize here and post again properly when this hangover clears. But he said revenue may not even be the ones doing the investigations etc here. They don't know yet, but if it goes anywhere else but the gardai or revenue, they will be utterly useless is his opinion as their cases will just fall apart because they don't have the experience to follow through. So it should come to revenue is his opinion, but is still a waste of their time and they expect that it will have a huge negative impact on revenue collected.

Anyway some points he made.

1 - The chances of getting caught, fined or convicted are as close to zero as you will get.
He pointed out all of the offences involving everything from littering to social welfare fraud (that have massive teams on it and they hardly ever catch anyone) that they cant make stick.

2 - He explained that in revenue they think this legislation is a total and utter waste of resources, though they don't know how many if any will be on it yet. Revenue work off the premise that they will pump large amounts of resources (tax payers money) into getting very few high profile convictions, which should then hopefully scare other people enough to not do it. Most things investigated pay for themselves like large scale tax evasion, but he said certainly not Airbnb/short term letting. That's just a waste. There is no way to recoup the money that will be spent so the effort will be tiny and will stop after 2 or 3 convictions if they can even get them with the press assault going with them. Its just not worth it to continue after that.

3 - Usually they want to make people pay their taxes with this expensive blitz and press. He reckons all this one will do is remove people already paying their taxes through Airbnb and other legit sites, to other platforms, who will now have the correct opinion that staying legit with revenue will only increase your chances of gaining their attention. In short it, if they put the pressure on people for Airbnb/ short term letting it will cause less taxes to be paid than are already being paid, which he said they find absolutely hilarious he tells me.

4 - He pointed out that there are so many holes in this legislation it is laughable. I wont post them here but they made perfect sense to me when he explained them to me. The legislation seems totally unworkable with so many ways around it. He went into at least 5 or 6 if not more. He explained that if you can get a way around a law that doesn't involve doing anything illegal then what you are doing is perfectly legal (Did I say that right) and no one can punish you for it.

5 - Basically he said the government are faffing about in the wind and have no idea at all what they are doing when it comes to taxation on rental properties. They are throwing the baby out with the bath water were his words.

Anyway, im off to bed. I know some of that didn't make much sense but i'll come back tomorrow and see if I can tidy it up.
I found it very interesting anyway and I hope some of you find it interesting too. He did mention many other points which I had never thought of, so i'll come back when I remember them.

Jay Dee

Hi,

all this one will do is remove people already paying their taxes through Airbnb and other legit sites, to other platforms, who will now have the correct opinion that staying legit with revenue will only increase your chances of gaining their attention. ....... if they put the pressure on people for Airbnb/ short term letting it will cause less taxes to be paid than are already being paid.

We are now over 1000 posts, and this one is the first one that makes since, and it came ( allegedly ) from the people who are enforcing it..
and it makes sense....

Jay

Graham

Since when are revenue overseeing planning enforcement or the residential tenancies act?

Dav010

Graham wrote: »

Since when are revenue overseeing planning enforcement or the residential tenancies act?

I would suspect they may be interested in the income earned on platforms other than Airbnb which deal in cash payments, unlike Airbnb which do not.

You would hope that with legislation like this, there would be some sharing of information between Revenue and Dept of Environment. So those involved with planning and tax evasion/fraud would be among those that are better informed about investigation and enforcement. If they have no confidence in it, how can anyone else?

Now we have both someone from Revenue and a highly placed official with DCC saying the legislation is difficult to enforce.

davindub

Dav010 wrote: »

Now we have both someone from Revenue and a highly placed official with DCC saying the legislation is difficult to enforce.

Or some idiot made up a story and posted it to boards? They call it fake news.

Revenue have no involvement in these new regs.

Graham

So we have a third party report that someone in a completely unrelated government department with nothing to do with the subject suggesting they think it might be safe enough to ignore the planning legislation and the RTA.

Uh huh.

Fan of Netflix

Eoghan Murphy needs this to work. He is not a fool, I can only assume all of this has been worked out and that enforcement will be happening.

Dav010

Graham wrote: »

So we have a third party report that someone in a completely unrelated government department with nothing to do with the subject suggesting they think it might be safe enough to ignore the planning legislation and the RTA.

Uh huh.

If you are considering ignoring the legislation, not that I would advocate that, and want to rely on a first party report from someone in the most related government department stating that legislation is difficult to investigate and report, just Google “Richard Shakespeare Airbnb”

Dav010

Fan of Netflix wrote: »

Eoghan Murphy needs this to work. He is not a fool, I can only assume all of this has been worked out and that enforcement will be happening.

I don’t think you should assume all this has been worked out and that enforcement will be happening. There have been notable examples where legislation was not worked out before being passed.

Graham

This would be the person with a vested interest in emphasising the difficulty in order to secure appropriate funding for enforcement?

Dav010

Graham wrote: »

This would be the person with a vested interest in emphasising the difficulty in order to secure appropriate funding for enforcement?

Either scenario emphasises the fact that Hosts need not worry too much about this, either Councils are not prepared, or can’t get the money and resources to enforce.

Claw Hammer

Since the beginning of the current housing shortage, the whole strategy has appeared to be to give the appearance of doing something, anything in the hope of buying time and that the market will then sort out the problem. So we've had then caps, extended notice periods, housing hubs, help to buy et cetera et cetera.
This is just the latest "be seen to be doing something" stunt. The reality is that the planning authorities want tourism. There aren't enough hotel bedrooms. Tourists come into the country and spend money in shops restaurants and pubs. The councils get their rates from the same restaurants, shops and pubs. It doesn't take a genius to see the relationship between tourist numbers and counselling comes. Air B&B could be stopped in a few weeks if they were really serious.

Graham

Dav010 wrote: »

Either scenario emphasises the fact that Hosts need not worry too much about this, either Councils are not prepared, or can’t get the money and resources to enforce.

You keep referring to an article from a while back where they were only starting to estimate at funding requirements.

Of course there will always be an element of wishful thinking from a particular sector that hopes this will all just go away.

At the end of the day, regardless of the above. Most property investors will comply with the law.

Dav010

Graham wrote: »

You keep referring to an article from a while back where they were only starting to estimate at funding requirements.

Of course there will always be an element of wishful thinking from a particular sector that hopes this will all just go away.

At the end of the day, regardless of the above. Most property investors will comply with the law.

How about a more recent one from just a few weeks ago where DCC stated they had no staff to enforce the legislation.

https://www.dublininquirer.com/2019/06/05/is-dublin-city-council-ready-to-enforce-new-rules-to-rein-in-short-term-lets

The wishful think you refer to is not limited to one side by the looks of things.

Time will tell if most apply with the law, a recent analysis by the RTB showed that a significant proportion on LLs do not comply with RTA, and this is where tenant can complain directly, what hope then for enforcement relies solely on local councils?

I think you yourself are indulging in some wishful thinking.

Bluefoam

How about you follow the law/legislation instead of discussing how easy or difficult it would be to enforce, catch you or otherwise implement. Obeying the law is not about evading the law, it's about following a set of rules the apply a cross the board on a societal level... You might win by hiding a few quid, but society looses. I hope anyone evading is punished appropriately and shamed for doing so.

Dav010

Bluefoam wrote: »

How about you follow the law/legislation instead of discussing how easy or difficult it would be to enforce, catch you or otherwise implement. Obeying the law is not about evading the law, it's about following a set of rules the apply a cross the board on a societal level... You might win by hiding a few quid, but society looses. I hope anyone evading is punished appropriately and shamed for doing so.

I suspect the reason it is being discussed is because many property owners feel they are being unfairly targeted, not just with this legislation but also with the RTA/RTB.

But as I posted earlier, if there is a legal way of avoiding prosecution while continuing to operate a short term let, there should be no issue with it being posted.

Graham

Dav010 wrote: »

if there is a legal way of avoiding prosecution while continuing to operate a short term let, there should be no issue with it being posted.

Mod Note

There have been no such discussions. Move on.

Further attempts to discuss moderation on thread will not end well.

LuckyLloyd

There is a strong political incentive for a scalp. Particularly when the public can see the residential properties being used as unlicensed hotels all around them. There is a political will here, a strong will. And there are definitely ways.

A scalp shall be forthcoming in my opinion.