PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Data from Airbnb shows that hosts using the online home-sharing service earned about $26 million and hosted about 174,000 visitors in Maine last year.
Airbnb allows people to advertise their rooms, apartments and homes for a relatively short period.
The data released Wednesday shows that the majority of Maine rentals were in Portland, where more than 51,000 people were hosted. Owners earned about $7 million.
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Gov. Paul LePage’s budget has proposed amending the state’s tax rules to ensure that hosts on Airbnb and similar platforms are collecting the required lodging tax of 9 percent and forwarding it to the state.
The Portland Press Herald reports that if all Airbnb hosts had paid that tax in 2016, the state would have collected about $2.3 million in tax revenue.
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