David Collado, Minister of Tourism, announced today that the Dominican government has signed a letter of intent with the short-term rental platform Airbnb to regulate the services it offers in the Dominican territory.
In March of last year, the official made statements validating that the platform would be regularized and pay taxes; in fact, he assured that the measure would take effect in 60 days.
He stated that this type of tourism has grown "extraordinarily", an action that encouraged the government institution to take action.
“We firmly believe that these platforms must pay taxes and be regulated,” he said, adding that the economic measure would take place within the next 60 days.
“Look, it doesn’t mean more taxes, it’s about regularizing them,” Collado clarified this Wednesday during an interview on the radio program El Sol de la Mañana, from the International Tourism Fair (Fitur 2023) in Madrid, Spain, which opened today.
Last year, the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII) submitted to public hearings a project to regulate the procedure for applying the tax on transfers of industrialized goods and services (ITBIS) to digital services, such as Netflix and Airbnb.
The Director General of Internal Revenue, Luis Valdez, confirmed in July of last year the implementation of new taxes on digital platforms.
He explained that the application of the tax was intended to gradually raise one to three billion pesos, including all digital services provided by Amazon, Expedia, Google, Netflix, Spotify, DiDi, Uber, Airbnb, among others.
“We have discussed the draft bill, taking into account the feedback we received through our website and also with the main service providers,” the DGII director told the press.
Although its approval is pending by the Executive Branch, the 2023 Draft General State Budget Law included the tax revenues that its collection would bring.
During the radio interview, Collado noted that the Dominican Republic has between 83,000 and 85,000 hotel rooms, but, in contrast, there are 93,000 available on Airbnb.
He reported that the country has about 16,000 rooms under construction and needs to reach an availability of 130,000 hotel rooms to meet the demand based on the objectives set by the tourism sector in the short and medium term.
“We believe in that type of tourism (Airbnb), we are going to support it, the only thing is that it has to be regulated,” he said.
He indicated that when he talks about regulating it, he means knowing where the tourist is staying in case something happens to him or he is deceived.
