Airbnb agrees to pay $621 million to settle a tax dispute in Italy

ROME (AP) — Short-term rental platform Airbnb has agreed to pay 576 million euros ($621 million) to settle a years-long dispute over unpaid taxes in Italy but won’t try to recover the money from its hosts. Airbnb said in a statement on Wednesday that it was working on introducing new tools that would allow hosts to have their taxes withheld automatically by Airbnb and paid to the Italian authorities on their behalf. In November, Italian prosecutors said the company owed about 779 million euros ($840 million) in short-term rental taxes it had failed to pay on behalf of Italian landlords who used the platform between 2017 and 2021.