Short-term rentals in Mission Viejo, including people who rent parts of their homes on sites like Airbnb, do need to collect a lodging tax, city leaders said this week as they moved to “clarify” its transient occupancy tax.
This week, the City Council updated its transient occupancy tax, money collected from hotels and other lodging facilities that is put toward the city’s general revenue. While the tax has always been enforced on hotels, there was some confusion among those who rent their property or part of their property over whether they, too, needed to remit the tax, said Mission Viejo spokesperson Kelly Tokarski.
The council billed the update as a clarification to its existing ordinance, and councilmembers unanimously agreed to it during the Tuesday, Jan. 9 meeting.
“Essentially,” said Tokarski, “this amendment closes the loopholes in the existing code and specifically references short-term rentals.”
“We believe that there are a number of short-term rental properties that are failing to remit transient occupancy tax in accordance with the ordinance,” said Tokarski. “The purpose of amending the ordinance is to further clarify the requirements to eliminate an ambiguity in the fact that the city’s long-standing ordinance does apply to short-term rentals.”
The ordinance was updated to add “online travel company” and “short-term rental unit” to ensure these parties are responsible for collecting the lodging tax. It now underscores that short-term rental properties have the same responsibilities for collection and remittance of the tax to Mission Viejo as hotels, according to the staff report.
The renovated ordinance defines short-term rental units as temporary lodging in hotels, motels and residential units for less than 30 consecutive calendar days.
“This is no way amending or changing the already existing tax rate,” said William Curley, the city attorney. “This is a high-level housekeeping to get our code current….
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