The home rental company AIRBNB has announced Brazos County homeowners are slated to earn almost $1 million dollars as the result of rentals during this season’s Texas A&M home football games. But it’s not known if all those homeowners are paying local hotel occupancy taxes.
AIRBNB told WTAW News they do not collect hotel tax…or HOT money…that goes to the cities of College Station and Bryan or to Brazos County. AIRBNB homeowners are responsible for making local HOT payments.
One estimate of how much local AIRBNB homeowners owe in local HOT money is almost $94,000 dollars. That’s based on taking the $963,000 dollars AIRBNB estimated homeowners received from renters during Aggie home football games and multiplying that by the local HOT tax rates…which are seven percent in Bryan and College Station and 2.75 percent for Brazos County.
AIRBNB collects the state’s six percent hotel occupancy tax. And last year, AIRBNB gave the state about $116,000 dollars for rentals in Brazos County.
That would mean Brazos County homeowners last year earned $1.9 million dollars from AIRBNB rentals.
If all those rentals were in either city, Bryan and College Station would have split $135,000 dollars from the city’s seven percent hotel occupancy tax, and Brazos County would have collected $52,000 from the county’s 2.75 percent HOT rate.
The city of Bryan told WTAW News it does not keep track of hotel tax money from AIRBNB or by home rentals as a group. Bryan tracks HOT money by the individual property owner and address.
In College Station, during the fiscal year that ended September 30th, the city received $53,000 dollars in HOT money from all registered rental properties. There is no breakdown of how much of that came from AIRBNB and how much came from bed and breakfasts and other home rentals.
From Brazos County, county judge Duane Peters passed along from county treasurer Laura Davis, that the county received just over $6,000 dollars in HOT revenue from 52 homeowners last July, August, and September. Like College Station, that revenue covers all rental housing.