[ceejayoz]

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.

(Side note: Usual "Google the headline" trick works on FT.com's paywall)

[jessriedel]

Also, the much higher VAT rate paid by most hotels in the UK compared to most AirBnBs (17% vs 0.6%) is not because AirBnBs are illegally avoiding the tax, but simply because most hotels, but few AirBnBs, cross the business-size threshold where the higher VAT kicks in.

[justincormack]

its not a "higher VAT" threshold, you do not have to register for or charge VAT at all if your business earns less than £85,000 (you might want to if you pay out a lot of VAT though). This is unusual in the EU, most countries do not have this exemption I don't think.

[nathanvanfleet]

Canada has the same thing. You have to collect more than 30,000$ in income before you need to collect taxes for it.

[jessriedel]

Thanks. Yes, those percentages must be averages, with most Airbnb's paying zero.

[szx]

FYI, HN's handy little "web" link, below the title, does exactly that (i.e. Google the headline)

[sctb]

Thank you, we've updated the title.