Tax Expansion for Direct Premium (November 2025)

Is there a way to opt out of automatic tax remittance and still have a manual option of the taxes going to us to pay?

Yes. That is the Direct Basic offering.

Right but if you wanted to be on Direct Premium and opt out of automatic tax remittance….shouldn’t that be an option as well?

No. The Direct Premium offering from Hospitable is set up to have Hospitable as the Merchant of Record.  The Merchant of Record (MoR) is the entity that legally sells the product or service and is responsible for collecting and remitting applicable taxes to the government.

Yes, but on Airbnb they are the Merchant of Record and you can opt to collect/remit your own taxes. I think VRBO is the same but you have to make a call into C/S to set it up whereas with Airbnb you can make the switch yourself.

My understanding is that in many jurisdictions, the OTAs have a binding agreement to be the sole collector of record for taxes if they are the Merchant of Record. However, to your point, there are some jurisdictions where Airbnb will allow the host to check a box and opt-out of Airbnb’s remittance and part of that process is that the host is accepting responsibility for any tax errors or missed filings. I’m not privy to the entirety of how Hospitable is handling taxes in every jurisdiction and I believe they have a partnership with Avalara to handle tax matters. Point being is that I don’t think it is as simple as just opening up an option for hosts to opt-out. Even if all of the tax liability matters weren’t an issue, there may still be implementation details that would need to be worked out. I think it is quite clear that Direct Basic is the product offering for hosts who want to remit their own taxes, have their own Stripe account, and take their own chargeback risk and Direct Premium is for hosts who want the taxes handled for them, don’t want to deal with having a Stripe account, and who want chargeback protection (as well as guest vetting and damage protection). I don’t find it likely that Hospitable will allow hosts to pick and choose which parts of Direct Premium they do or don’t want.

​@Brandon Huetteman, Is there a way to opt out of automatic tax remittance when on Direct Premium and still have a manual option of the taxes going to us to pay?

Hi ​@MoniqueD! No, there is not an option to opt out of tax remittance if you are using Direct Premium. In many jurisdictions, as a marketplace facilitator and/or Merchant of Record, Hospitable is required to collect and remit taxes on behalf of those users according to regulations and our agreement with the jurisdiction. As such, for Direct Premium, there is not opt-out as if we collect and remit a tax, we will do so for all Direct Premium users for that specific tax; however, with Direct Basic, this does allow you to manage your taxes and tax remittance.