Airby and B's got itself an Italian job.

Hello and you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne.

Good morning.

Thanks for tuning in.

An Italian judge has ordered the seizure of 835 million dollars from the short-term

rental company, Airbnb, over alleged tax evasion.

The BBC's Luke Wilson has been looking at this story.

Hi Luke.

Look just tell me what the background is to this dispute.

Yeah so this is all about the tax that landlords need to pay in Italy.

They are required to pay a 21% tax on their earnings and prosecutors

are saying that Airbnb failed to collect that tax from landlords. You're looking at around

four billion dollars that they say Airbnb are responsible for so we've had this

Italian judge order the seizure of around $800 million of assets from AirbnbB&B. We should say that AirB&B say they're surprised and

disappointed at the action announced by the Italian public prosecutor and

then they've been taking action on this as well. And what action have they been taking?

Yeah, so they challenge this law, the 21% law was talking about, saying that it goes against

EU rules. There's this kind of idea of a principle of freedom to

provide services across the EU. They also argued that they're not a tax

collector and this went to Europe's highest court, the European Court of

Justice last year and they agreed.

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