Airbnb Will Begin Collecting Transient Occupancy Taxes For San Francisco Bookings Next Month

Airbnb announced today that it will soon begin collecting and remitting a 14 percent hotel occupancy fee for guest stays occurring in San Francisco. In a blog post, Airbnb’s regional head of public policy David Owen wrote that the policy will go into effect for all bookings that take place on or after October 1 in its home city.

The introduction of the tax is just the latest step in Airbnb’s efforts to legitimize its peer-to-peer lodgings marketplace in the face of regulators and local government agencies in cities around the world. It’s been working with a number of agencies in cities like San Francisco, Portland, Paris, Berlin, and New York City to ease concerns revolving around public safety, as well as those about Airbnb hosts running illegal hotel operations.

That debate came to a head in New York, where Airbnb ended up capitulating in a legal battle with the state Attorney General over user data related to hosts who were operating multiple listings. Airbnb ended up clearing its listings of so-called “bad actors” in that market when hit with a subpoena, and eventually turned over user data so the AG there could go after those hosts.

The debate in San Francisco hasn’t been quite as acrimonious, and in fact, Supervisor David Chiu is pushing legislation that would make short-term stays through Airbnb legal in the city. That legislation comes with some caveats around who can rent out their apartments and for how long, but it would at least settle the issue in Airbnb’s home market.

Key to that legislation will be its institution of the Transient Occupancy Tax, and Airbnb will likely play ball not just in San Francisco, but in other markets that require it in the future.

Airbnb said it would collect the tax and remit it to the city on behalf of guests and hosts, rather than requiring them to do any additional paperwork or tax filing on their own. At the same time, that tax could fundamentally change the price structure and attraction of booking an Airbnb — after all, in many cities Airbnbs cost less than comparable hotel rooms, especially during peak demand.

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Airbnb Hands Over Data About 124 Hosts To The NY Attorney General

In the latest exchange between Airbnb and the NY Attorney General’s office, the peer-to-peer lodgings marketplace has agreed to hand over “unredacted, personal information” on 124 of its past and present hosts. The news follows a long-running back-and-forth between Airbnb and the Attorney General, which has been seeking to crack down on illegal hotel operations in the state.

In a post on the blog post, Airbnb public policy chief David Hantman said the vast majority of those hosts were no longer on the site. Earlier in the year, the company purged approximately 2,000 listings ahead of a court date it had with the Attorney General.

Airbnb’s fight with the AG’s office began last fall, when it issued a subpoena requesting thousands of host records. The company argued that request was “overly broad” and actually won a legal decision against the Attorney General. However, his office issued another subpoena before Airbnb agreed to settle and hand over anonymized data. Now Airbnb is taking that agreement a step further, as the AG’s office ferrets out hosts with multiple listings on the site.

New Airbnb Logo Wants You To Draw It Like One Of Your French Logos

In a real-life scene that could be in HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” Airbnb unveiled a very sexually connotative logo today: Bélo. Apparently no one in on the design process asked themselves, in this guy’s parlance, “Does this logo look like a boobs and a butt and a hooha?”

Per Armin Vit’s post, “The answer has to be a resounding “No”. If there is just a slight hesitation, then it probably does look like [genitalia].”

And, in a move of staggering obliviousness (or genius), Airbnb wants you to design your own VBnB logo, with its special tool, which some members of our team can’t stop using.

Here is Darrell Etherington’s design:

And Matt Burns‘:

But this is just the start. Donuts, cherries, USAirways flights: There are literally a million things you can add to Airbnb’s new logo, and we want to see what you, our readers, can come up with.

Put your best ones in the comments or tweet them at us @TechCrunch with the hashtag #buttlogo. As Airbnb itself implores, “Sketch it. Paint it. Put a penguin on it.”

*Disclosure: My significant other works at General Catalyst, an Airbnb investor.