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Travelers both in state and out of state renting from the popular Air BnB will be seeing the company collecting taxes in more places throughout the state. As Matt Galka tells us, local governments view the taxes as vital revenue streams.

You’re going on a trip and might want to skip the hotel. Popular alternative Air BNB offers rooms or even whole houses in local neighborhoods. But some Florida counties are missing out on tourism taxes. Leon County is one of them.

“Our budget, 100% comes from the tourist development tax, and that’s the tax that our guests pay who are staying in our commercial lodging establishments,” said tourism director Lee Daniel.

Air BNB started collecting taxes for 22 counties in December and just added another four

“AirBnB is being, to their credit, a good corporate citizen and reaching out to all counties in Florida collecting a tourism development tax,” said Daniel.

In Tallahassee the rentals are popular during legislative session and Florida State football games. AirBNB says new agreements around the state could add up to new tax revenues in the millions.

One of the hold ups is that there are 67 counties with varying tax rates.

Florida TaxWatch says a legislative fix could help to even the playing field between Air BNB and hotels that pay the taxes already.

“We want to make sure that they’re paying taxes and they’re properly regulated, and it’s an innovation, and it’s a cool innovation, it’s a wonderful thing. But they ought to be treated similar across all 67 counties in Florida, with an eye towards encouraging this kind of innovation at the same time,” said TaxWatch CEO Dominic Calabro.

Florida is one of only a hand full of places in the country where the tax is collected.