1283: Investing News from Chicago & Short-Term Rental Bubble? with MyLodgeTax's Rob Stephens
17 Sept 2019 · 34 min
In episode 1283 of the Creating Wealth Show, host Jason Hartman and guest Rob Stephens (co‑founder of MyLodgeTax, an Avalara company) discuss three main themes. First, they examine Chicago’s real‑estate environment, noting Amazon’s expanding footprint, the city’s relatively low property prices compared with other “mismanaged left‑wing” markets, and the looming risk to California’s Prop 13 tax shield. Second, they analyze the short‑term rental (STR) market: its rapid growth, the balance of supply and demand, the entry of institutional players such as Marriott and other branded operators, and how economic cycles could affect occupancy and pricing. Third, they dive deep into the complex tax compliance landscape for STRs, explaining the myriad local, county, and state occupancy/tourism taxes (often 10‑23% or higher), the role of platforms like Airbnb and VRBO in collecting some taxes, and how MyLodgeTax provides a cloud‑based service to register, collect, file, and remit these taxes for hosts. Throughout the conversation, the hosts intersperse political commentary, cautionary advice about market manias, and promotional details about upcoming events and contests.
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Welcome to episode 1283. 1283. Thanks for joining me today. So good news for our Chicago investors. With all of the fiascos going on in Illinois, you know, their pension crisis, et cetera, et cetera, Chicago still is a world class city. Of course, that depends where I get it. You know, same with any other world class city, New York, London, etc. Etc. But Amazon is expanding in Chicago. Since 2010 they've spent $4.4 billion in the state of Illinois. They are really increasing their tech hub presence there. They're adding 70,000 square feet of space at the Franklin office building in downtown Chicago and they should in very short order create an additional 400 high paying jobs there. So they are into that market. So one of the things that you've got to realize about the Chicagoland area, I will freely agree that they're another mismanaged left wing area. But hey, what other mismanaged left wing type of government area can you get into for the price you can get into Chicago for? You can't do it in Los Angeles. Another mismanaged left wing disaster. You can't do it in San Francisco. Same applies there. You can't do it in New York City, you can't do it in Miami, you can't do it in any of these places. Chicago is like the last one standing where you can get into one of these sort of world class cities at a reasonable price. We're not doing that much business there right now. We had an issue as I told you about before, with one of our vendors there. And so we've kind of cooled off recommending that market and the property taxes. Any broke left wing, poorly managed government is always looking for money. And I tell you, like we talked about yesterday In California, Prop 13, they're coming after Prop 13 and if that happens in California. Whoa, hold on to your hat. Because disaster will follow. Many times over the last 15 years I have stated that one of the reasons California has been lucky enough to experience the kind of appreciation in prices it has now, the cash flow's terrible and pathetic. And by the way, Chicagoland is the only leftist area like that where you can actually get cash flow, right? You can get properties that make sense in terms of getting close to that 1% rent to value ratio metric. Right? You can't do that in any of these other poorly managed left wing markets.
Do you like how I put that? I want to invest in a poorly managed left wing market like California or New York. Can't do it. Can't do it in any of these areas. How about London? No way, not even close. The last one of these standing. How about Hawaii? Can't do it in Hawaii. You know any of these left leaning areas, right? The only one I would submit, the only one you can do it in is Chicago land. That'll actually come close to making sense. Ah, what was I saying? Oh, Prop 13. California. When Prop 13, if and when Prop 13 goes away, God forbid that is going to be. You know, remember Ross Perot when he was running for president? Some of you aren't old enough to remember this, but anyway, he had a really funny presidential campaign with these cool flip charts. And when he was running for president he talked about and popularized the term that giant sucking sound. Right? When he was talking about nafta. And he turned out to be right. Ross Perot was absolutely right. But wow, if you don't think that has happened in California yet, if Prop 13 goes away, I mean, first, if they pass rent control, that'll be of course a massive disaster. But secondly, if Prop 13 is attacked, you know, some say, okay, well they're only going to attack Prop 13 on commercial real estate. That won't matter to me because I own residential real estate. Are you asleep? Wake up and smell the coffee.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Because that will definitely affect you. Because guess who, who is occupying commercial real estate? People with jobs. Oh, let me see if all that commercial real estate gets really expensive and a round of Foreclosures comes along as it will if, if the taxes just soar. I mean, the taxes in California in comparison on a percentage basis are so cheap. I know, I know. All of you listening. In California, my former home state, for the vast majority of my life. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, jason, my tax bill in California is outrageous. Well, sure, compared to the, you know, because of the value of your property, the price of your property, the assessed value of it. Yeah, your tax bill is high. But as a percentage, your taxes are cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. Unless of course, you are unlucky enough to live in one of those special assessment districts like Mello Ruse or whatever the assessments are that are out there, all those bond issues, they float to raise your taxes. I lived in many of those in Irvine and Newport coast over the years. I know your tax bill is much higher, but, but if you were simply paying the Prop 13 Protected Tax Assessment in the socialist Republic of California, you gotta bow toward Howard Jarvis Grave every day and pray because you are lucky, lucky, lucky. And if that goes away, wow, that will be just insane. I mean, I can't even imagine the devastation that will occur if that happens. Well, our guest today is going to be talking to us about short term rentals and the potential short term rental bubble. Now, interestingly, I just made an offer on a short term rental property for myself. Yes, from one of our local market specialists. He's been on the show before talking about the properties. He has. But overall, from a macro sense, you really gotta pay attention to this. You gotta still, even though there's a lot of money that's been made, and money will continue to be made, just follow my commandment number 21, thou shalt avoid manias, okay? Whenever there's this mania, whenever things are being just massively over promoted, you gotta check your brain at the door and have some like, common sense about things, look at things rationally, not with a lot of hype, okay? Take a step back, look at the big picture. So many people, they're looking up close, they're looking at the brush strokes on the painting, but they need to take a step back and look at the whole painting, right? And that's what we've got to do. We've got to keep ourselves in check. All those people that lost their fortunes in the tulip mania back in Holland in the day or whatever mania it was throughout history, humans are very susceptible to manias. It wasn't just 10 commandments, it wasn't just 20. We're up to commandment number 21 of Jason's commandments for successful investing. And number 21, thou shalt avoid manias. Don't be caught up in the mania. Now, before we get to our guest, I want to say one more thing about Amazon. These tech companies are abusing their power in absolutely deplorable. Hey, do I sound like Hillary Clinton? They're deplorables. All these deplorables. You know who the deplorables are? Is the big tech companies. They are abusing their power in ridiculous ways. Well, the Wall Street Journal just reported that Amazon changed its search algorithms in a way to benefit its own products. Surprise, surprise, surprise. I told you. I told you they were doing this before the Wall Street Journal reported this. I said that. Okay? And I was just speculating, but what do you know? I was right again. I was right again. Okay, now here's the thing. The reason this is so disgusting, as is all the disgusting stuff that Facebook does. Absolutely disgusting stuff Facebook does. Absolutely disgusting stuff Google does. And the absolutely disgusting stuff Amazon does. And really, all these tech companies, these platform companies, right, they have access to data that can allow them to and does allow them to unfairly compete. Think of it. In the Amazon world, if you want to sell something on Amazon, you go into their marketplace, you create a product, maybe you do all the research and development for that product, you put it on their website, like my girlfriend does. She's. She has an Amazon business. You spend all the money, you do the heavy lifting, and then Amazon looks at all the data of how your product's selling and decides how they're going to show your product in the search rankings. And they'll decide if the reviews on your product are fake or unacceptable or not. And they'll just decide everything of how it's presented. And then they'll use all this data to decide whether or not they want to go into that business and compete against you. That is absolutely disgusting and should be illegal. And these disgusting, abusive tech companies have got to be busted up. Thank God the government is finally on what I've been saying for 15 years. Okay? Now, attorneys general in 50 states. In 50 states. Now, of course, that leaves seven states that they're not doing anything. Didn't Obama say we had 57 states? Yeah. So according to Obama, there's seven more attorneys general that are not doing anything about Google yet. But at least in 50 of the 57 states. Do you love my sarcasm? Probably not as much as I do. Okay, the attorneys general are attacking Google. Thank God. Long overdue. And we're finally getting some balance of power here. So this will unfold and continue. Okay, let's get back to real estate. Join us for our Profits in Paradise event. I got to tell you something very special about this event. For the first time ever, we are adding a property tour. Yes, we are adding a bonus property tour on Friday. Never been done before. Never been done before. Hey, think of it. Last year Profits in Paradise was in Hawaii. Do you think we're going to do a property tour there? No way. We wouldn't guide you to such crappy investments. I'm your guide. My team is your guide. We only want to get you the good stuff. So we are doing a bonus property tour on Friday, the day before Profits in Paradise starts on Saturday. So join us for that. Go to Jason hartmanlive.com and don't forget about our contest. You can get free tickets plus maybe a free cruise to for our cruise event. And that's@jason hartman.com contest. So you can see all this just by going to Jason Hartman. Make it easy for you Jason hartman.com go check it out. Let's get to our guest. Let's talk about short term rentals.
It's my pleasure to welcome Rob Stevens. He is co founder of Avalara, my lodge tax. And we're going to talk about tax compliance for for short term rental properties. Also, talk about the marketplace in general. Rob, welcome.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Jason, happy to be here.
Happy to have you. Where are you located?
We're in Denver, Colorado.
Okay, great. What is going on with the marketplace in the short term rental world? When we were speaking off air for just a quick moment, I said that my impression just anecdotally was that the market is starting to get to a point where it might be oversupplied, where there are so many people converting properties into short term rentals. Kind of has that feeling of a gold rush. And you know how those always end. All manias end the same. It's just a question of when will they end? And you had kind of a counter to that. Go ahead and tell us what your thoughts are.
Yeah, I mean, I haven't necessarily broadly seen or heard that. And I've been doing this since 2000, actually 1999, so almost 20 years. So the industry's very different than when I first got involved. But you're absolutely right. I think Airbnb short term renting has really become ubiquitous. It's happening everywhere. There's tons and tons of people doing this. There's a lot more properties out there on the market for rent. But what I'm seeing, and I have my own short term rental that I rent here in Vail, Colorado and that my experience, at least for this little market for the winter, was I continue to get really strong bookings. So I think the websites have grown a lot, but I think they've done a really good job of driving a lot more travelers to the short term rental option. HomeAway used to do market research years ago and even in 2010, 2011, there wasn't great awareness of short term rentals as a category for travelers. And I think clearly Airbnb is really a household name. HomeAway, Vrba become very large successful companies. I think there's just a lot more travelers. So I think keeping up with the supply side is the properties, the demand is, is the traveler side. So I think that equilibrium is relatively in check now. The other trend we're seeing is I think the market is certainly as it matures and you've got more people doing it. We're also seeing a lot more serious people doing it. Like for instance, Marriott announced that they're going big into the vacation rental space. They announced the last week or two.
You'd think that a company like Marriott has been in the vacation rental space since their founding. They are a hotel after all.
Well, certainly on the hotel.
But I know what you're saying in.
Terms of adding the traditional short term rental property property to their mix. So that's another trend we're seeing is very professional, institutional, well capitalized branded operators coming to the space, providing a really consistent and quality experience.
Okay, so before we get there, I'll just hold that Marriott thought for a minute because I want to just go back to the equilibrium question. And I agree with you, there are a lot more travelers, there's a lot more bookings. But let's just look at what's gone on over the past decade or so since the rise of Airbnb and coming out of the Great Recession. Over the past decade we've had a booming economy. Certainly there are chinks in the armor, I get that. But overall, I think, you know, everyone would agree the economy is booming and we've also had additional hotel construction. Hotels are still moving along and we have increased the supply of travelers. But we have this really good economy with really low fuel cost, keeping airline prices and travel opportunities, transportation opportunities, cheap. So what happens when we finally enter a recession, which we inevitably will, and maybe we see energy, fuel costs go up and an overall slowdown in the economy? I mean, something has to give. Right. The supply of travelers will likely decline.
And I don't track it closely, but my understanding is that the hotels are doing pretty well, like their occupancy is decent. So, you know, either the hotels have to give up occupancy because it's shifting to short term rentals, or there's just overall more demand, which I know there is, but will it continue? You know, what's the future hold? And then let's talk about the institutional players and what that means.
Yeah, sure. Great question. And certainly to your point, at least from my corner of the world, I haven't seen, certainly short term rentals has not been the demise of the hotel operators. I think they continue to grow and thrive and certainly the vacation or the short term rental industry is booming. The pie must just be getting larger and larger. I think in the context of. You bring up a good point. It's been a great run for over 10 years, economically. We do have some data going back to 2007, 2008, when we had the Great Recession. I was in the short term rental space at the time. I don't think Airbnb had been founded yet, but certainly HomeAway was an established company operating. It'll be interesting to see what happens because certainly it's clear when there's a recession or pullback. Discretionary spending, obviously travel and vacations being one of those, is the first thing to go from the consumer. Travel is typically hit very hard in those environments. How that falls out will be interesting because what we saw as an industry in 2007, 8 is yes, a big pullback in consumer spending, but what happens is people go to drive in markets on the Gulf coast rather than fly to Hawaii or fly to the Caribbean. People still want to take trips, they shorten them, they want to spend less money. In some sense, vacation rentals can be a really good option in that scenario. I don't think anybody has a crystal ball, but certainly from 2007 and 8, short term rentals really weathered that storm pretty well. For some of the things I mentioned, people still like to take trips. So drive in markets. More affordable properties, properties you can share with families.
So they don't fly to a vacation, they take a road trip vacation, which is less expensive, but it's still more expensive than staying home. And there are still home exchange programs if someone wants to trade their house rather than actually renting one and paying for basically two places at the same time. But it kind of begs the question, Rob, and here's the $64,000 question. Is it cheaper to stay in a short term rental or a hotel? I don't know about that. Certainly for a big family it's probably going to be cheaper to stay in a short term rental, but for everybody else, I don't know. You know, by the time you add these cleaning fees in and this and that, I mean, I know hotels nickel and dime, you too, but hotels have gotten, I don't know, they're not that expensive given all the bargain hotel sites out there and so for sure, yeah.
I mean, I think they're, you know, in some segments, you know, they're different, they're different products for different people. So I mean I use hotels a lot when I travel for business, particularly one, two night stays. You know, at least right now, vacation rentals, short term rentals just don't seem like a great option for me. Certainly when I'm going anywhere for a week or with groups, if you're going with friends or a couple of friends or families or sharing a place, I do think it's a great option. Now look, there's very expensive short term rental properties out there, but I think part of the value is the nightly rate. But part of the value is you have your own kitchen, you have multiple rooms, you have more space, so you're not going out as much, going to restaurants, you have the ability to share the space. You kind of spend time communally. That's the other part this industry will talk about is the community element. And I've stayed in hotels with my kids before and they're in a separate room and my wife and I are in a different room or we're sharing a room. And that's not always a great experience. But look, hotels, to your point, hotels are continuing to grow for certain types of trips, that really makes sense. I think for other types of trips, short term rentals are going to make a ton of sense.
Okay. So I kind of wonder what's going on with the timeshare industry in all of this. I haven't heard much about it. Timeshares used to fill that sort of short term rental, you know, vacation ownership kind of a need. And of course they've adapted and changed and maybe they're a little less sleazy than they used to be, I think, and definitely more institutional. Certainly many big names in that world now, Marriott included, Ritz Carlton, etc. But do you know anything about what's been going on with timeshares? Because most timeshares are more like a home, they're more like a condo, you know, They've got a, they've got a kitchen, they've got a laundry, all that.
Right. I mean, you know, anecdotally, you know, we do bump into them, we have a few of them as customers of our business. But I think your general premise is correct that with if you can go to an Airbnb or a VRBA website and you have millions of properties to choose from and kind of book now pretty easily online, conveniently, you know, this has all become pretty easy to do. What you do, you really want to lock into to kind of a timeshare investment when you have such a broad product offering anywhere in the world that you can stay at through these short term rental sites.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think I wouldn't want to do that as much. Okay, now let's talk about the institutional players, what you were getting at before. So what does it mean when say Marriott or any of these larger players are entering the short term rental market? I mean, how.
How do you even classify them as entering the market? Are they buying single family homes? Is Marriott buying a bunch of single family homes and sticking them on Airbnb or what are they doing?
Yeah, I don't know their exact strategy, but typically it's very rare that they would buy the physical asset or buy homes or condos that's very expensive. They may control condo inventory at their resorts, but the typical model is to partner with property managers. And this is one of the big trends we're seeing. We're seeing companies like Marriott partner with multifamily operators. By multifamily, I mean people that own and operate apartments. And these are large, well diversified real estate companies with huge inventories of apartments across the U.S. that's where some of these larger and more branded operators are getting the inventory that they can then put in a short term rental pool. That's one of the big trends. The multifamily operators combined with these branded operators like Marriott or Asander or Lyric, they're trying to create a real consistent guest experience, much like a hotel would like. If you stay at a Marriott, you kind of know what you're getting versus a Holiday Inn. Well, that's the type of experience they want to create for vacation rentals, quality linens, quality furniture packages, maybe even concierge or guest services, very professional interactions. And so they're targeting the traveler that's more serious, maybe the business traveler, sometimes the higher end traveler. But from my perspective, it's really raising the are across the industry. And I think going back to your original question, trends I think this is all good for travelers.
Right.
Travelers have more options now. They have branded options. They can set a Marriott short term rental, they can stay in a branded like a sonder where they know what kind of experience they're going to get, have some services attached to it. So I think, I believe the market's getting more difficult for the kind of casual or passive short term rental owner or the person that's just doing it sporadically or, or not putting a lot of effort into it. And this maybe connects back to your saturation point. So as the industry matures and the bar raises on the quality of properties, operators and guest experience, you have to know what's going on if you're short term renting and continue to create a quality experience and operate in a professional way, if you're going to continue to succeed in this marketplace. So that's the other thing we're seeing. It's just the bar is being raised.
Yeah. Okay. I'm just sort of wondering how you classify it as a short term rental style property. It's obviously not a hotel room. You're saying it's an apartment, but it's not going to compete with the single family home market?
Well, I mean single family homes are a big part of the short term rental market. Probably in resort locations. When you get into the cities, it's apartments, condominiums, properties like that.
Interesting. Anything else you want people to know about the marketplace overall, where it's going to. And then let's talk about the tax.
Compliance aspect, broadly speaking. And I've touched on some of this. I've been doing this for 20 years, Jason. And when I first started renting my property in Vail or if I rented a property from somebody, it was an offline. If I wanted to book it, I had to email them or call them. Usually you send a check to the mail. There was all this kind of offline.
You go pick up a key somewhere. It's super clunky.
Exactly. And all that has really been streamlined. So whether you're a guest or an owner, I think it's gotten easier and easier to do. The industry is hugely popular and booming to your point. Probably in certain markets it is getting to a point where how many more short term rentals can you have? But I would just encourage people that want to travel that way or have an extra property or want to try it. It's a lot easier now than it was even five or ten years ago.
Yeah. But the ease, remember there's always. This is what I always like to Tell my listeners that there's always an equalizing factor to everything. So it is easier. You're absolutely right. The technology and you know, from everything from the platform sites where you can list the property and find guests, to the electronic locks and smart home features, it's all made it a lot easier. You know, and the fact that just the, the public has sort of accepted it as normal, just like we've accepted the idea of getting into some stranger's car, you know, and not only getting into some stranger's car, but taking candy from him.
It's funny what we' accept it as normal. It's really amazing the way the sharing economy has redefined the whole way we interact with things. It's incredible. But because it's easier, you've lowered the bar, you've lowered the barrier to entry. It's easier for everybody. So it's easier to create more supply and have more people jump into the market as well, right?
Absolutely. I mean, a long time ago I was in college and you took an economics class and supply and demand, you're absolutely right. Supply will continue in the marketplace at some point for property owners, their nightly rental rates or their occupancy rate, they're just not going to be able to command as much dollars for that rental if it just keeps going. There is an equilibrium there. Maybe we've probably hit it in some markets, but at some point people will keep entering and the economic theory is that the marginal benefit will keep going down and the risk is you hit a saturation point.
Talk to us a little bit about tax compliance, what your company does and what's new in that world.
Yeah, I mean, that's our little corner of the world in the, as we've talked about, the industry become very large, popular, successful, lots of growth. But for every one of these vacation rental transactions, for every booking, there's a hotel occupancy tax component to it. And it's not always well understood by the host or the homeowner. We see it as a real blind spot. And that's basically our role in the marketplace is to provide an online cloud based solution for $20 a month where we're going to handle all the registrations, all the forms tell people the correct tax rate that they need to collect from the guest and then file and pay that tax, which is typically due every month or every quarter. So there's a lot of moving parts to these taxes that the rank and file person engaged in short term earning isn't always aware of. They never dealt with it before. So, again, it's a part of every transaction. We're here to help people solve it and make it very, very simple. And we leverage technology to do that. In terms of trends in our space, the big trend over the last couple of years, I think starting two or three years ago, Airbnb started directly collecting or remitting tax on behalf of hosts. That's been a big change over the last couple of years that the big platforms like VRBO and Airbnb have entered into the tax collection remittance game. Now Airbnb is collecting and remitting in over 40 states. HomeAway has started to expand their tax compliance footprint. In some instances, that's great for the host. It's one less thing for them to worry about if Airbnb is collecting and paying the tax instead of them. But what we're seeing is typically these platforms are paying the state taxes, but not city and county taxes. Like here in Colorado. Airbnb has an agreement with the Colorado Department of Revenue where they pay the state, but they don't pay my town of Vail local taxes. Even though these platforms are paying some of the tax, in most cases, the host still has a obligation, which in some sense creates even more confusion for what people need to do. And again, that's our role to solve it and bring technology to bear to solve it. But tax compliance and taxes and regulations is a much, much bigger issue in the industry than when we spoke four years ago. But the market's changing with some of the platforms handling some of the obligation.
And so this is the same tax that hotels charge. Right? You call it the occupancy tax. I think some call it the tourism tax tax, though. Right.
It's called different things in different states. It's, you know, tourism tax in Florida, it's hotel tax in Texas, it's room tax in Oregon, it's sales tax in a lot of places. But yeah, it's. By and large, it's the exact same tax that a hotel has to pay on the overnight stay, which I think we're all familiar, checking into a hotel and paying that extra 10 or 15%. It's that same 10 or 15% that all of us in the short term rental space have to collect or admit.
How much do these taxes differ from one area to another? I mean, of course, there's 50 states. Well, 51 if you include Puerto Rico. And then there are just probably 400 local municipalities tax. I don't know, maybe there's more than that.
Like 4 to 5,000.
Oh, my God. Wow. I was kind of going by the number of counties or MSAs, I guess. Yeah, you can't do it that way. So how much do they vary? I'd be curious to know. You know, interestingly, some of the generally considered low tax jurisdictions where you might want to move to have rather high tourism or hotel or occupancy or whatever you want to call it. Tax. Just speak to that for a moment, maybe give us a couple interesting examples, if you would.
These taxes generally function pretty similarly across the US the challenge with these taxes, like I mentioned, is you've got thousands of different tax jurisdictions with their own tax. So it's all pretty similar. You got to register and collect the tax, pay it monthly, that type of thing, but it's different for each city and county and that's the real complexity there. These are state taxes, but also city and county taxes. So they vary all over the US and typically it's the urban markets. I would say that These taxes average 10 to 12%. This is a tax on the rent. So if you charge your guests $1,000, it's an extra 100 to $120 in tax. Well, when you get into urban markets, you start to encounter very high tax rates, typically, you know, 15% or higher. Chicago is probably on the far end of the spectrum right now with I think over a 23% tax on short term rentals. So that's very high. But it's very common when you get into urban markets with lots of hotels, lots of, you know, business travelers, transient activity, that you have high tax rates. I mean, look, it's a great revenue source for a lot of municipalities because it's a tax that the local community doesn't pay. It's a tax on visitors and travelers. So it's the classic, you know, the hotel tax, the, the car rental tax is always very high in these communities. In the urban communities, they can be very high taxes.
Interesting. I almost think when I asked you that question, I almost wanted to recommend that as a strategy for tourists. I mean, look, now people are getting sophisticated enough and I've recommended on my show for many years that people get themselves out of high tax jurisdictions and make a plan to at some point, hopefully in the near future, move to a no income tax state or lower income tax state. But now I think it's even worth considering shopping that as a tourist because it can be pretty significant. I remember once renting a car, for example, in one of my favorite places where I did live for six years. I was in Scottsdale, Arizona. I posted A screenshot of my rental car bill on Facebook because I was so astonished. The tax was 69% of the overall car rental fee. I mean, actually the cost of renting the car was 31%.
I was astounded. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I think me and everyone listening to this are probably nodding their heads. We all have that experience with these types of taxes.
I mean, when the government is making more on the deal than the actual company, I really feel sorry for the company.
Hotel tax, I don't think there's certainly no hotel tax that's 50% or 60% or anything close to that. Just because, look, hotels are a big ticket item. Typically if you're staying in an urban market, it's hard anywhere in this economy to stay for a decent hotel for less than two or three hundred a night. But again, in the urban markets, it's very common. It's a 15 to 20% tax. So I think we're all as consumers, when we're traveling, there's the quoted rate and then when we check out, it's just always higher and sometimes significantly higher just because of these taxes. And like I said, it's a great revenue source for municipalities that have a lot of hotels and travelers.
Yeah. Interesting stuff. Anything else you want to share before you wrap up?
You know, I don't think so. Just as I mentioned before, short term earnings become very popular. It's gotten very easy. So I would just encourage people to try it, whether they're a traveler or if they want to jump into it as a homeowner. And if they're looking for help with the compliance side of it, that's our role in the world.
Good stuff, Rob. Give out your website. Mylodgetax.com Mylodgetax.com Rob, thanks again for joining us.
Jason. Thanks for having me.
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