SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Two communities in South Carolina, The Towns of Mount Pleasant and Port Royal, are working with Deckard Technologies, a government-focused tech company that provides software, analytics and insights for communities to create tax fairness, to assist them in identification of properties that owe occupancy taxes for short-term rentals (STRs). The data from Rentalscape, Deckard’s STR monitoring software, provides better detail of STRs for town managers and councils, helping them to establish policies that preserve the local communities’ culture and to mitigate concerns, while also giving them the opportunity to collect taxes.
Although the state of South Carolina has voluntary collection agreements with the major US short-term rental platforms, the communities were unable to audit payments, lacking detail on the actual properties, booking trends, rates charged, and duration of stays. They also found that although state-run transient occupancy taxes (TOTs) were being collected, additional local taxes were not included in the agreements. These county or city taxes, which may change from area to area, were not collected, and therefore, the towns were losing out on revenue needed to support fire, safety, and town maintenance.
According to Jane Yager-Baumrind, Planning and Development Specialist for the Town of Mount Pleasant, this lack of detail created a great deal of work for those government employees responsible for collecting TOTs. “It used to take us days, weeks, even months to get the back taxes from hosts who thought it was already paid, not realizing they owed another 3%. The capability given to us by Rentalscape is extremely important for us to see the actual rental property addresses and the trends, especially when people are buying second and third homes specifically for this purpose. Hosts should be paying the taxes on them to help maintain the community, just like hotels pay.”
Deckard uses its Rentalscape platform to identify the STRs by address, property owners, and violations of STR ordinances that may differ in each city or town, such as properties that do not have permits, those that do not include a permit number in advertisements, or that offer occupancy that differs from their permitted time periods. In addition to each property detail, Rentalscape can aggregate the number of STRs active in the county, identify aggregate revenue due and average daily rates charged, identify booking trends and the average number of nights booked per reservation, for at least one year past and three months in advance. It also lists the platforms used by STR hosts, so in cases where the visitors are using platforms other than Airbnb or VRBO, such as booking.com, which is popular in other parts of the world, the cities can know that they need to collect the full TOTs mandated.
Nick Del Pego, CEO of Deckard Technologies, says, “Since hotels are responsible for these payments, it is only fair that people who are renting their homes out as businesses should also make these tax payments. Our goal is to provide tax equity and fairness as well as information that helps local governing councils determine the best level of short-term rentals for their own communities to lift the quality of life for all their citizens and sustain healthy tax bases to support smart growth.”
Communities wanting additional information can contact info@deckard.com, call 858-333-7835, or visit: https://www.deckard.com; Facebook; LinkedIn.
