Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

THE TAX IMPLICATIONS OF COMBINED TRIPS 615 of tourist apartments and houses. The VAT exemption should only accept the lease of habitual housing or the stable rental of second homes (a temporary term should be set), and not another, such as tourism. In fact, as currently stated, the exemption generates doubts about the lack of neutrality of the tax, not between the rental of habitual and second-home housing with the rental of tourist housing, but between the latter type and the services accommodation provided in hotels, hostels, inns and other similar accommodation establishments, always subject to VAT. There are no great arguments to defend that the tourist lease is not homogeneous to hotel accommodation. b) Material and formal requirements for collaborative economy platforms as intermediaries in the rental business of apartments and tourist apartments. The last modification that affects them of the Regulation of Management and Inspection The new dilemmas around the rental of tourist homes and apartments have been emerging on the prominence of the platforms and instruments offered by the so-called “collaborative economy”, which perform visibility and intermediation work on products on the internet or in mobile phone applications, connecting normally to individuals. Such platforms have an undoubted prominence when it comes to tourism supply and contracting, especially housing, and apartments, normally acting as mediators and commission agents 19 . In fact, the collaborative economy has found its main field of action in the tourism sphere or in nearby sectors, both in the transport sector (see BlaBlaCar or Uber ) and in the tourist accommodation sector ( Airbnb ) 20 . From the tax point of view, the companies that make up the collaborative economy present great challenges, being a scientific object at this time of the doctrine, which discusses what role they should assume in the face of the Treasury. There are three main levels of discussion: the legal classification of the 19 The Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, “A European Agenda for the collaborative economy”, Brussels, 2 June 2016, COM (2016) 356 final. On page 3 he defines “collaborative economy” for the purpose of communication. Thus, such “… refers to business models in which activities are facilitated through collaborative platforms that create an open market for the temporary use of goods or services often offered by individuals. The collaborative economy involves three categories of agents: i) service providers that share assets, resources, time and/or competencies – they may be individuals who offer services occasionally (“peers”) or service providers acting in a professional capacity (“Professional service providers”); ii) service users; and iii) intermediaries that – through an online platform – connect providers with users and facilitate transactions between them (“collaborative platforms”). In general, collaborative economy transactions do not imply a change of ownership and can be carried out with or without profit.”. 20 About the taxation of Airbnb , vid . ANEIROS PEREIRA, J.: IVA y economía colaborativa …, op. cit.