This is the relevant quote, and not that clickbait title:<p>> The VAT on most Airbnb stays can be as little as 0.6 per cent because the UK only levies the tax when businesses sell more than £83,000 per year — a threshold reached by very few Airbnb hosts. It is otherwise only payable on Airbnb’s booking and service fees.<p>So the problem is that many "small business" pay less taxes than big companies, which seems fair. The main difference is that thanks to Internet, those small business now can be aggregated into a platform while still operating independently, which is basically awesome.
Hotels are heavily taxed because tourists and business travellers can't vote. In many cases cities like London and NYC are non-fungible goods, so if you want to go there you just have to pay the taxes. If they ever get high enough that hotels can't book rooms, the businesses should lobby the government to lower them.
This is a bit of a deceptive headline. The immediate sub-headline is "Up to third of price gap with hotels is due to tax treatment, FT finds", which is a pretty massive difference.<p>(Side note: Usual "Google the headline" trick works on FT.com's paywall)
"around a third of the $100 saving you make over the price of an average hotel room"<p>Up to 30USD of the 100USD I <i>save</i> compared to a regular hotel? PER NIGHT? In that price range, $30 are a mere tip.
"<i>Airbnb did not comment directly on the FT’s calculations, saying that tax was proportionate to the level of activity provided, not the platform on which accommodation is listed. It suggested it was misleading to compare someone occasionally sharing a spare room with a 200-room hotel with high occupancy rates.</i>"<p>Is AirBnB still pushing the "spare room" thing?