Airbnb Fees - Explained! - YouTube

hi and welcome back to my channel I'm Matt the creator of Airbnbuncovered.com

and Airbnb super host on this channel I uncover some of the best kept

hosting secrets as well as share with you everything that I've ever learned

after hosting over 3,000 guests on today's video I'll be answering a

question I see all the time which is how do Airbnb ease fees work many of you are

wondering how much money you'll actually make after Airbnb takes their cat in

this video I'll show you exactly how much you can expect to earn and how to

calculate it we'll get into three main areas the first is the fees every guest

and host have to pay to Airbnb the second one is the additional fees that

you can add to your listing and the last one is sales and hotel taxes I post

weekly videos all about the basics of Airbnb you'll get the most out of my

videos if you're new to hosting and are looking for strategies to ensure that

you're earning five-star reviews attracting the best guests and earning

above average nightly rates I'm focused on creating a community of responsible

and reliable hosts who will likely go on to become super hosts if you're new to

my channel please subscribe so you won't miss out on my new videos if you're

enjoying my videos please give them a thumbs up before we get started I want

to point out that I made this video in March of 2020 Airbnb is constantly

changing their policies in the way they do things so if you're watching this

video a few years from now this information may no longer be accurate

I'd assume I would update this video but just in case I want to make you aware of

the time sensitive nature of this video

so what fees does Airbnb charge both hosts and guests officially they have

one fee and it's called a service fee according to their website they use this

fee to maintain the platform and provide support to hosts and guests it's

basically their way of making money and covering the costs of operating the

business Airbnb charges the service fee to both

the guest and the host and their separate items despite being called the

same thing why they did that I'm not sure it can make things more confusing

if you're just starting out but let's start with the host side hosts are

generally charged three percent of the total reservation I say generally

because there are some exceptions in mainland China hosts are charged ten

percent hosts with a super strict cancellation policy are charged a higher

fee and Airbnb does have some pilot programs going on where hosts are

charged a different percentage or fee but for all intents and purposes there's

a good chance you'll be charged the three percent because Airbnb normally

discloses when the service fee will be more than three percent and that's not

very often now let's get over to the guest side of the service fee which can

be as high as twenty percent of the total cost of the reservation I say as

much as twenty percent because Airbnb doesn't exactly disclose how they

calculate the guest service fee we do know it's on a sliding scale with the

average being about 14.2% the sliding scale is supposed to

compensate for bookings with a high total cost so after a certain amount the

guests service fee percentage will start to decrease if you think about it if

you're booking accommodation for let's say three months and the the total cost

would probably be pretty high so if Airbnb adds 20 percent on top of your

three-month stay it gets pretty expensive and to be honest Airbnb is

involvement on a three-month stay would likely be minimal after checking so to

compensate for this Airbnb lowers its fee as the totals increase over a

certain amount again we don't know what that certain amount is because here

Jimmy doesn't tell us to be perfectly honest though you don't need to be

overly concerned about exactly how Airbnb calculates a guests service fee

because it's always calculated automatically and it's always shown to

the guests if you're asked about it you can simply say that Airbnb determines

the amount and they don't tell us exactly how it's calculated and that

your guests can direct their question to Airbnb for more information since is

their fee and you have no control over it but I think I've gotten that question

maybe a handful of times over literally thousands of requests but I'm just

explaining it here so that you know how things work for a guest when they're

considering booking with you and so that you have a total an idea of the total

amount your guests are paying there are a few other fees that host can charge

and I'll explain those in a minute but I think the easiest way to explain

this fee is with a simple example let's say that you have set your nightly rate

at $100 and you get a booking for that rate after Airbnb service fees you'll be

paid $97 so $100 less three percent your guests will likely pay around $100 a

hundred and fourteen dollars and 20 cents based on the average service fee

of 14.2% Airbnb will earn 17.2 dollars which in

this example is three dollars from you and fourteen dollars and 20 cents from

your guest things get a bit more complicated when you start to layer on

the optional host fees in your listing set up screens you can add additional

fees that you want to charge your guests these fees include a cleaning fee extra

guests fee resort fee management fee community fee and a linen fee the extra

cleaning fee and the extra guest fees are the most common let me briefly

explain both a cleaning fee as the name implies is a fee to clean your home for

your guests when you enable the cleaning fee it is applied once to every

reservation unfortunately if you want to charge this fee more often you have to

do it manually through the Resolution Center and this would apply if you offer

daily or weekly cleaning the cleaning fee doesn't have to exactly match what

you pay to have your home cleaned and you can still charge one if you do the

cleaning yourself like I do in many cases the extra guests fee is simply

that a fee you charge for extra guess you can set when the fee is triggered so

you can specify if you want to start charging your extra guests fee after the

first second or whatever number of guests the last four fees I mentioned

resort management community and linen fees they're all pretty rare in fact

they're only available to host with six or more listings so host like me I'll

just quickly go over them so that you're aware of them they're all set up in the

same way and it's either a percentage of the total booking cost or a fixed fee so

either something like 2 percent of the total cost or a flat fee of $50 to

briefly explain each one the resort and the community fees they're roughly the

same thing there are a fee you can add if your

listing is located in a place that charges for running a short-term rental

the management fee is a fee you can charge for running your Airbnb and the

last one as the name implies is linen fee and it's the cost of providing

towels and linens to your guests like the rest of the optional fees you can

set these to whatever you'd like and they don't necessarily have to exactly

match what you're paying for that when setting up your Airbnb just be

leery of how many fees you add I can't imagine your guests will enjoy seeing

six additional lines of extra fees added to the total cost of their reservation

depending on where you live you may also have the option to add sales tax and a

hotel or tourist tax to your listing if you can enable this option it will be

shown on your listing page with the option enabled Airbnb will add these

taxes to the cost of the reservation which means your nightly rate as well as

any additional fees will receive tax the Airbnb service fee is not taxed though

the amount of tax charged by the system will be separately listed in your

transaction history by separating the tax out in your transaction history you

can easily calculate how much you need to remit to the government I say

depending on where you live because Airbnb doesn't yet provide this option

everywhere and that's unfortunate but if the option isn't available in your area

Airbnb offers you two ways to collect taxes and it's either through a special

offer or the Resolution Center if you need to collect taxes manually then you

need to communicate this requirement and the exact amounts or percentage to your

guests prior to them booking you can do so by outlining these requirements in

the House Rules section of your listing please bear in

mind it is against the Airbnb Terms of Service to add additional not previously

disclosed costs to a reservation after it is started because that's just unfair

to the guests pro tip here if you have to collect

taxes manually and you don't want the extra hassle of creating a special offer

or using the Resolution Center for every booking you can also just increase your

prices by the tax amount and then calculate your taxes owing on the total

that you've been paid out by Airbnb to easily get the amount

of sales tax you need to pay multiply what you've been paid by Airbnb by the

tax rate divided by one plus the tax rate so let me give you an example yet

if your tax rate is ten percent then you divide 10 by 1/10 and multiply that

result by the amount that you've been paid out to get the amount of sales tax

that you collected if you are including the tax in your nightly rate and the

extra charges remember to only report the pre-tax amount as income so that you

don't pay income tax on the sales tax that you collected to wrap up let's go

back to our example with numbers which I think will do a nice job of summarizing

how fees and taxes are calculated and paid on Airbnb remember we had a one

night reservation for $100 under that simple example you as the host got $97

and the guest was charged 114 dollars and 20 cents now let's layer on the two

most commonly used additional charges an extra guest fee and a cleaning fee let's

say you charge $50 for cleaning and $25 for extra guests your new total revenue

from this reservation is now 100 plus 50 plus 25 which equals 175 air B&B will

take 3% of your earnings as their host service fee and so instead of receiving

175 you'll get 169 and 75 cents your guests will pay 175 plus the 14.2%

service fee which will bring their total to 199 eighty-five if we take this one

step further and add sales tax the only part that will change is the total the

guests will pay so the guests will see a subtotal of 175 both the sales tax and

the Airbnb guest service fee are calculated on this subtotal remember

sales tax doesn't apply to the guests service fee if your sales tax rate is 10

percent the sales tax is equal to 17 50 Cent's the Airbnb service fee will be

the same as it was before which was $24 and 85 cents and the new guests total is

217 dollars and 35 cents

again depending on where you live Airbnb may end up paying you the sales tax

amount collected and you will have to remit that to the tax authorities or

they may remit it on your behalf which has I hope the case for you because it

makes things much easier I hope this answers the question of what fees Airbnb

charges if it doesn't please comment below with any additional questions you

may have and I'll answer them for you if you enjoyed this video and I really

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post weekly thanks again for watching and bye for now

you