earlyretirement
Moderator
Nope this is NOT difficult at all. Argentina said the same thing. People this is VERY easy. And you can even fund the employees for the city with Airbnb or charge a surcharge to cover it.
Argentina doesn't get that making a more regulated short-term rental system is great for everyone. Tax revenues increase, more accountability and insight on tourism, who is using them, etc. It gets local owners actually paying income tax because almost none are. You require a DNI #. There are lots of property managers that just have accounts in the USA and nothing goes through Argentina. I'm not saying that's bad but I can guarantee if Airbnb requests a tax ID # (DNI) and you don't input one they charge 25% more taxes. Mexico does this. If you don't put in a Mexican RFC # they automatically retain more money. I think it's like 10% more that the government automatically takes and puts it into a pile. They do this as many Americans don't have a tax ID # there so they get penalized for not having one.
Argentina can easily do the same. Make a local input a DNI #. If it's American owned, by law you have to have a local tax representative anyway. It's the law. And I can GUARANTEE you that NO accountant will want this responsibility so you figure out some big % that people have to pay if they don't input DNI #. Trust me, things would get figured out very quickly!!
My guess is you'd have 50% to 65% of the Airbnbs that are owned by locals and renting out short-term if they have to input their DNI # they will go back to long term rentals and more into the shadows. The government just needs to know how to structure this and I could help them. I offered the same help back when I owned the largest property management company in Argentina. I wanted the industry regulated because all my clients were paying taxes. I knew right away that we would have a HUGE advantage because we were already paying taxes anyway. But Argentina never wanted to regulate it because my hunch is all the politicians and their families and their friends ALL own real estate and all renting it on Airbnb now. But it would be glorious for all the non-resident foreigners that are already paying taxes. I can promise you they won't care about putting in their DNI #'s on their website. You have to have a common sense approach.
That's why people like me will always hope for regulation because I know it will cause me to get even more business as most of the locals will drop off the face of the Airbnb earth if the government instituted a policy like this. And all the people complaining about Airbnb on this board and saying how it hurts locals, will find themselves with Airbnb's that might be 50% to 75% more expensive. Plus if the government gets serious, you may have to pay 19% IVA plus 2% city taxes. This is added on to tenant end, not owner end. Owner pays 3% commission to Airbnb plus any retention or income taxes that Argentina tells Airbnb to pay it.
You could easily set up inspectors. This is NOT hard. I used to buy and manage hundreds of properties and I'd go and inspect most of them myself with my business partner on a monthly basis to "spot" check them. Salaries are dirt cheap in Argentina!! You could easily hire an inspection division. I could set it up within a week. I'm not joking. Some lawyers are only making like $500 US dollars per MONTH right now. I could easily hire and train an army of employees and inspectors and regulate the Airbnb industry in Argentina within WEEKS.
So no real excuses why this can't be done..
