sodamo wrote:

 

Seems if HA/VRBO wanted to be proactive they would make it a required entry for any Hawaii VR address and create a specific display area.

I absolutely agree.  I've been sending my advertising sites (VRBO/FlipKey) support email asking that they help inform the Hawaiian owners, and place a push-button on everybody's page where the owner-entered tax ID goes to the DoTax site showing the owner's registration, and a "What's This" next to the button that pops-up a dialog saying that the state is concerned about legal rentals, and to look that the owner is registered for both GE and TA taxes.

It doesn't need to be a prominently located button, just the same location for all web pages, and allow bots so that the DoTax could easily write a web crawler that would gather this information.

The only way I could find to contact the Governor:

http://hawaii.gov/gov/contact/contact-gov

I still think this is going to be impossible to "police." I advertise on sooooo many websites, and I have found a few where it is impossible to add the tax ID number. Either they see it as a telephone number and I get an error reading (if you put it in the description), and many of the sites are set up to just clickon amenities, rates, etc., and any thing unusual in the body is disallowed. I can't remember which website I was trying to add my information to, but I couldn't put it anywhere!!! Frustrating, time-consuming, and again - who is going to police this?

Oh - very good to know!! Of course, I have it on my website, But some vacation rental websites don't allow links to your personal site.

IMHO, it just makes sense that the VR sites, HA/VRBO/Flipkey etc get ahead of this and hard code the requirement in such a manner as to cover all states/locals. Other than that, as long as we, the owners make a valid effort and include where we can as well as pay our GE/TAT, I would hope the state would give us credit for trying.

Blackburied brings up the future fight:

I'm a bit surprised that there has been no comment on the new Maui VR law, specifically:

"* Having a property manager handling check-ins and checkouts living within 30 minutes of a rental's location and be able to respond to a complaint within an hour."

I think that we will see very similar language in the next go around instead of the non-resident/resident fiasco of this session. If an owner can meet the 30 minute/hour requirement then no problem, else licensed PM.  Can't see a constitutional or Nafta challenge with this language and it gets them what they want.

David

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See discussion here:  http://community.homeaway.com/message/23727#23727

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There is a high probability that your Tax ID will be copied from yiour site and used on other properties.  I hope the state can figure out who is using the correct number from the original registration.  With multiple properties (including bogas properties)  being listed, the tax as estimated from the properties would be wrong leading the rightful property owner to defend the taxes paid.  Seems that the security issues have not been thought through.