[Jeff & Judy]

All renters and rental property managers/owners should be aware that Sumter County, which includes a large portion of The Villages, voted to drop the 2% tourist development tax effective October 1st. Prior, rentals in The Villages (again Sumter County only) should have carried a 9% tax, as of October 1, 2020, the tax rate dropped to 7%. I've included a copy of the ordinance change as well.

This means that if you are a renter as of October 1st, you may be deserving a 2% tax refund from whomever you rented from (if they collected the tax). If you are a property manager/owner, then when you file your October Transient Rental Taxes, you should only be paying 7% rather than 9%. But it also means that you should be refunding the 2% difference back to your renters.

If you as a renter, simply agreed to a fixed amount rental which didn't include an itemized line for the taxes - this wouldn't include you as the manager/owner basically pays the taxes out of their pocket.

Even if you rented thru a website such as VRB0/HomeAway, Airbnb, (I don't know about other websites) you are definitely deserving of a refund. As these sites automatically charge the tax and until 10/28 for VRB0/HomeAway (don't know about Airbnb), they continued to charge 9% tax on all rentals and costs (e.g. cleaning costs). Even if you're renting out in in the future - if you used one of these websites to make a reservation, and have made a payment - it included a 9% tax.

If you are a manager/owner and use these sites, you are also deserving of a refund because most likely your renters used a credit card and you paid a 3%-5% credit card fee not only on the income but on the taxes as well. So with a refund of the 2% delta to your renters, you should be refunded the associated credit card fee on this refund. Although honestly, VRB0/HomeAway has not yet acknowledged this situation?

As a side note, I've been fighting with VRB0/HomeAway to get them to issue refunds and change the tax rate for going on 2 weeks and it took them until 10/28 to get them to listen. They even asked me for a list of all of my impacted renters and the overcharge. I explained to them that is not just about my renters but all Sumter County renters, but I did provide them their requested list. On 10/28, they finally changed the tax rate to 7% and have contacted my renters individually about the refund, but are requiring each of my renters to provide bank account info in order to do a direct deposit of the refund amount. This seems insane to me as they should simply be issuing a credit card refund IMHO! I've notified all of my renters that this is not a scam and it's up to them as to if they want to provide the bank info to VRB0/HomeAway (I'm sure the website hopes they don't so they can keep the funds). What I don't know is if VRB0/HomeAway is addressing all Sumter County renters or ONLY the ones I provided the names and amounts to? I hope Airbnb is doing a better job of dealing with this positive change by Sumter County.

If you have questions, please contact whomever you made the rental agreement with and paid. You can show them the attachment as proof of the change.

Just wanted to share this info in case you weren't aware of it.

[njbchbum]

That tax was only supposed to be levied on rentals of 6 mos or less - so longer term rentals would not be impacted - correct or not?

[graciegirl]

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[vintageogauge]

The tax only applies to short term rentals less than 6 months and 1 day. I verified that with the state as they were erroneously sending me forms for our unit that is rented out on 12 month leases.

[Toymeister]

Details matter!

If you rented and the owner stated "includes all taxes" then no you don't get a refund. This is much like ordering a product or service before a IRS tax cut you don't get a refund because the tax rate dropped later when the product was delivered or service performed.

"All taxes included" is the most common way rental amounts are calculated for owner managed properties.

If you rented and tax was added (at 9%) after the rent amount then yes you are due a refund.