[mattbee]

Canada still has an exemption for small suppliers not to pay sales tax, so this provides a strong incentive for those to find ways to take bookings outside of Airbnb.

Does an owner-operated web site count as a "digital platform"? What about a centralised telephone booking service?

Or does it just mean "anything that's big enough to be targeted as one entity by government"?

It seems clumsy to tax the booking method rather than the supply itself, but maybe it's a matter of practicality for tax collectors.

[ryanbrunner]

I don't think this is such a bad thing. If AirBnB's role of the relationship isn't worth the premium you pay to cover taxes, that's a pretty strong argument that AirBnB isn't really providing much value and we'd be better off without a middleman in this relationship (I think for what it's worth that this probably isn't true, and people will happily pay 5-15% to be able to deal directly with AirBnB)

[mattbee]

Airbnb already charge VAT (in the UK at least) on the host service fees, i.e. the 15% of the transaction they keep for themselves.

So Airbnb already charge for their service, and they're taxed on it.

What's new is taking GST (or VAT) on the accommodation too, which is normally paid over to hosts direct, and who have to remit VAT only if they were over the "small trader" threshold (in the UK that is not many).