Welcome to the Door County Tourism Zone Commission

Update to Lodging Marketplace Legislation

2019 WI ACT 10 legislation is now in effect and we want to keep the lines of communication open (previous emails December 16th, 2019 and January 3rd, 2020). The implementation of this legislation would be best qualified as a fluid situation; there is still much uncertainty, information to be clarified and roll out of programming to occur both with marketplace providers and reservation systems.  If you don’t utilize online marketplace providers, please disregard this email.

At this time, no further information has been provided from marketplace providers or their registered agents. Many of you have requested an update about Airbnb. There are very apparent issues with the Airbnb roll out of programming to comply with 2019 WIS ACT 10. Listings throughout the county show that local municipal room tax HAS NOT been applied to ALL Door County Listings.Until Airbnb resolves their roll out issues, you will need to check your Airbnb listing(s) daily to see if Airbnb has begun collecting local municipal room tax.If you determine that local municipal room tax is not being collected, be sure you have in place a method to collect local municipal room tax, until Airbnb resolves the issue for your listing.As the responsible party, we don’t want to see you face tax liabilities because you didn’t review your account or insist that your online lodging marketplace provider get the taxation correct for your listing. How do you check your listing? The best way to check is by putting dates into your listing, by looking at your listing as a traveler. Review what is being collected on the Occupancy tax line, you will see either 5.5% or 11% reflected in the tax line total (screenshot examples at the bottom of the email).If only 5.5% is being collected, which is what was in place prior to January 1, 2020, then only WI State Sales tax is being collected (WI STATE SALES tax collection started in 2017 for Airbnb).If they both State Sales Tax and Local Municipal Room tax are being collected, you will see 11% reflected in the total on the tax line (5.5% Local municipal room tax + 5.5% State Sales Tax = 11%).We urge you to be cautious with contacting Airbnb via chat or email support, it appears that there is A.I. support being utilized, and in some cases, the information being communicated is incorrect.

What are we doing to help? We have communicated these issues to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, Wisconsin Hotel & Lodging Association as well as Representative Kitchens. We also have been forwarding the roll out issues to the registered agents for the marketplace providers.

We appreciate the efforts of Representative Kitchens to assist with putting forth correcting language for WIS ACT 10, via AB683/SB646. He has been a great resource and advocate in communicating to the legislature the issues associated with WI ACT 10. If you get a chance, please thank him for his efforts.  You can keep up with the progress of AB683/SB646 here.

More information is forthcoming as it becomes available. In the meantime, be diligent, aware and be organized for 2020.  We know you will have questions and require support.  We are here to help.

You can reach the Tourism Zone office at 920.854.6200 or
email: [email protected]                 
 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name *