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Yes for many years allot these home rentals were running under the radar and not paying anything and this was wrong. This was one of the reasons hotel room TAX was abolished and VAT was implemented. So they are not getting away anymore since all their expenses have VAT attached which they cannot claim as a credit. Their guests also are paying more when they payed little because, everything they do and buy now in the Bahamas has VAT attached. The couple extra dollars this regulation will garnish will do more harm than good. To now go and basically re implement room tax on private rentals is wrong.

We are well on the way to go further down the pole on the ease of doing business totem.

This is not good. These under taxed areas was what VAT was for. The people staying in these homes pay VAT on everything electricity, water, food etc. where little to nothing was paid before. Most rental homes do not earn more than 100k to register for VAT to receive credits and who wants to deal with government office B/S to just supplement offset the cost of maintaining/owning a property.

So private rentals will be taxed more than hotels because they cannot receive VAT credits and hotels get duty free and property tax free exemptions under the hotel encouragement act. So it would be like if VAT was implemented and room tax was not abolished.

I am a Bahamian who inherited some property and there are 2 little cottages on it that was used to help give my grandmother a few extra dollars before she passed and now helps to maintain this generation property. I rent them on Airbnb for one. If the government wants airbnb to charge an extra tax when people book and remit it to the government while I find this not right, it would be tolerable.

If these regulations mean I have to register with this government office and that government office and pay this fee and that fee. Have inspections conducted. Deal with all the government people out to lunch, picking up their children, broken down printers, phones that are not answered and the circus that is the Bahamas government then I will just shut the damn rental units down. The couple dollars I make to help upkeep the place would be no where near worth it.
So the maid who cleans has less work, taxi driver bringing people here has less work, rental car/boat company less rentals, boat tours less people, restaurants and grocery stores less people buying food, home repair people electricians, plumbers etc. less work. Government less money because no VAT on water, electricity, no departure tax. no VAT on my upkeep expenses, food and everything else. I imagine I am not the only one who feels this way. This is a sure way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Do not get rid of Bahamasair. I am a pilot and when Sky first started I thought well here is what seems to be a decent airline and I need to give them a chance so the government can stop spending money on Bahamasair. Then there were two engine fires coming into Marsh Harbour airport. Then they crashed and destroyed one of their planes at Marsh Harbour. Lucky for me before any of this happened I stopped flying them because on my last flight with them my seat was not fastened to the floor correctly so it moved around and I thought to myself if something this obvious and wrong is going on how bad must the stuff be I cannot see? I am sorry to say it was my last time flying sky. They always seem to be in such a rush as to sacrifice safety.

Freeport has long been a gateway for items to be smuggled into the Bahamas evading customs duties. Then transported to the other Islands outside of the port area. Customs enforcement in general not just on Freeport has been the weak link in duty collections, port area smuggling, and is still the weak link in VAT administration.

They are so full of BS. Out of the 6-7 day fiasco Abaco had one night of lightning storms so cant blame it all on the copper theft. The car accident that they keep referring to is a joke. There was a car accident near Sandy Point on the very southern tip of the Island. How does a pole broken off at the end of a 120+ mile island cause a island wide blackout? Is our system that weak and fragile and if so why is it so fragile? This madness has to stop!

Would it even be legal to impose a tax just on Airbnb customers and not all online vacationers? What about long term rentals? This just seems like it will get messy in a hurry. Was not the reason VAT was put into place was to capture areas of the economy like this that were not being taxed? Before VAT tourists in a vacation rentals paid relatively no tax. Now they pay VAT on restaurants, electricity, water, phones, car rentals, property managers etc. So it is a fallacy that these rentals are escaping taxes as they were pre VAT. So now these rental homes will pay VAT on everything except the final rental price and might have to pay a special tax? This is on the verge of double taxation VAT on all your costs plus a extra tax where VAT is not chargeable. I thought The Bahamas needed to improve its ease of doing business. Not make it worse. I agree with Required if anything new is to be taxed maybe it should be a 7.5% Vat payed on Airbnb's rental fee.

Lower cost for consumers usually by importing but, who are consumers? People need jobs to make money in order to be consumers. They are same person. The Bahamas is losing jobs left, right, and center. There needs to be a balance between protecting jobs (consumers) and their spending power. No job, no spending power. If the Bahamas thinks it can continue with the trade deficits that we currently have then devaluation is a certainty. It is a cycle and there needs to be balance. Over protection allows manufacturers/farmers to become lazy but, with the multifaceted problems in the Bahamas economy some government interference is needed to create a level playing field.

Well give us an efficient, competitive, low corruption, government, reasonable energy prices, access to credit on the international level, not just domestic, reliable basic infrastructure (phone, electricity, water, internet, roads etc.), educated workforce, among many many other things. Then we can maybe just maybe talk about being big boys and competing on an international stage. Pie in the sky without major changes in the Bahamas economy.