Excerpted from an editorial in Montreal’s The Gazette:

“Airbnb is an efficient and popular pillar of the burgeoning sharing economy.

Whether the hotel industry likes it or not, San Francisco-based Airbnb, with a market valuation of $10 billion, is here to stay. And so, whether Airbnb and its fans like it or not, this is why it has become all the more urgent to address some related social, fiscal and legal challenges.

Those include figuring out how to track rental income earned through Airbnb, for tax purposes; raising public awareness that tenants who sublet their dwellings without the consent of their landlords are violating the rules in their leases; and making sure people know there are insurance complications when it comes to liability for property damages that may arise.

Perhaps the biggest issue, for the general taxpayer, is that Airbnb in Quebec does not currently collect any of the room or sales taxes that traditional hotels charge. It should.

The way things work now, the onus of tax compliance is on the hosts who rent out space. Currently, Airbnb advises hosts of their responsibilities, but it doesn’t do anything more than that. And so Airbnb commercial transactions aren’t automatically generating the tax revenue they should, in the same way as commercial hotel and B&B stays. Tourism Quebec understandably conducted an inspection-and-fine blitz of Airbnb operators last year, as a prelude to negotiations this summer with the company to clarify its legal and fiscal obligations.

All Airbnb operations, like hotels and B&Bs, should be responsible for collecting and remitting sales and hotel taxes to governments. Portland, Ore., recently bargained hard for such an arrangement with the company. There’s no reason why Montreal and Quebec should settle for any anything less.

Nor should any other city or state. San Francisco and other foreign destinations are also negotiating hotel-tax agreements and other fiscal arrangements. New York and Paris, meanwhile, are dealing with a shortage of affordable housing exacerbated by the growing trend of landlords transforming rental units into lucrative de-facto hotel rooms, many of them linked to Airbnb.

The sharing economy — be it for room accommodation or taxi rides — is a game-changer that should not be wished, fined or legislated out of existence. But it must not be left to operate in black-market conditions.

To its credit, Airbnb has shown it is open to addressing some of the challenges that have arisen. Just because innovations that disrupt and revolutionize establishment commerce are popular, cool and convenient for consumers doesn’t mean they should sidestep taxation responsibilities. Bringing these newcomers into the regulatory fold isn’t about strangling them with bureaucratic red tape or stifling innovation. It’s about encouraging the sharing economy to share a percentage of its economic activity with the public purse, as all for-profit commercial enterprises are supposed to do.”