Airbnb deducts U.S. tax but I live in Canada

[John2197]

Hello everyone,

I live in Canada and a host since September 2017. In August 2018, I got an e-mail from Airbnb which says that I needed to add my taxpayer information and I did. Since the beginning of September, the system started deducting some money under "tax holding" from my payouts and I thought that it was going to Canada Government. 

Yesterday, I decided to download my gross earnings as an excel table and noticed that there are USD deductions from my payouts. First of all, I am not related to the U.S. and all the currencies and bank/PayPal accounts are CAD. 

I sent a message to Airbnb help team and this is the answer from them to my e-mail:

"thank you for reaching out regarding your tax withholding.

If you haven't responded to our request to submit your taxpayer information yet, we're required to withhold 24% from your payouts and remit it to the Internal Revenue Service under a regulation known as 6050W.

You can avoid this by submitting your taxpayer information at Account > Payout Preferences. Here's a link that will work if you're logged into your Airbnb account: ***

Once we receive your information, we won’t withhold from your future payouts. However, any amounts that have already been withheld and remitted to the IRS can't be returned to you by Airbnb.

The total amount withheld will be included on any tax forms issued to you so that you may account for these withholdings on your income tax return. We always encourage consulting a tax advisor if you need assistance accounting for any withholdings that have been remitted to the IRS on your behalf.

For more information about US federal tax, visit our Help Center: ***

Living in Canada, being a taxpayer to Canada Government, renting out your house which located in Canada but deducted US federal tax? Does that make sense to anybody? 

And now, they said that they are not going to cut my payouts anymore, neither refund the deducted amount. We are talking about roughly US$1,000 which is an important amount for me. 

Anybody had the same situation? 

Thanks,

John

[Emilie]

Hi @Craig697, 

Have you had a chance to look at this article? Sections 4 and 5 have some more info that should be relevant to your situation, especially about the W-8BEN form that you can fill out to confirm you are not a US tax resident. 🙂 

I hope this helps!
Emilie

[Tim3093]

I'm also having US Tax taken off of my Canadian AirBnB properties and am getting ZERO support from the SuperHost Specialists and am getting cut and paste emails from the "Tax Team" which are not addressing my two simple questions:

a) Why is US Tax being withheld on my Canadian Properties?

b) When will it be returned?

The lack of support is absolutely shocking. Literally every single AirBnB Support agent is working remotely and doesn't have any tools or supervision to help with any request. I have been waiting weeks for a simple response and have escalated this over 5 times, to no avail. I suppose there are two solutions: File a US Tax Return and see what happens or Litigation

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Tim3093 3rd option is to fill in a tax form(can't remember its number) and Airbnb should refund the withheld tax. Did they ask you to fill out a form that you didn't believe applied to you?

[Tim3093]

Thanks for the response @Mike-And-Jane0 , I submitted a W-8BEN, which has not been actioned, and I doubt it will be, given the time that’s passed. 

The lack of SuperHost support is absolutely shocking. 

[Robin4]

 @Tim3093   

Well there you go, these reports about US tax being taken from Canadian citizen hosts who have nothing to do with America other than being a neighbouring country started showing up here on the CC back in 2016. Here we are 6 years down the track and obviously, as you are still being impacted, little or nothing has been done to stop this.

In fact Airbnb have the gaul to say it's your fault because you haven't submitted the correct paperwork.

As Airbnb are going to keep on doing this and plead innocence here, you need to get onto your local CRA office and show them your relevant taxation status and let the CRA fight it out with US Inland Revenue Service........ I am sure Airbnb will suddenly find a way to stop this nonsense from happening!   

This is precisely why Airbnb has a 'No class actions' clause in their TOS.......it's easier to distance yourself from it than to fix it!

Cheers........Rob

@John2197  @Rich-and-Yan0  @Nicole2048  @Saima10

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Tim3093 Thinking about it, as you have filled in all the requested forms etc, I would advise a small claims court action against Airbnb for your withheld money. Its all online, cheap (nothing if you win) and Airbnb almost certainly won't contest it so you will win by default.