When planning a summer vacation, there are many people who are looking for so-called ‘shared lodging’, using officetels or general houses as accommodations. However, it is said that there are not a few places among them that do ‘illegal business’ without reporting to the local government.
Reporter Ha Hye-bin covered the story.
[Reporter]
This is a notice attached to an officetel in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
They say not to run an illegal lodging business, and ask them to report any related facts.
However, over the past five years, more than 1,900 cases have been cracked down on illegal lodging businesses across the country.
Secretly operating without notifying the local government, or renting an officetel as accommodation, which in principle cannot be used as a lodging온라인카지노 business.
Some operate on social media, but most are registered on shared lodging platforms.
Of these, only 734 illegal establishments registered on Airbnb accounted for 37.5% of the total.
As the number of shared lodging users has recently increased, illegal business using Airbnb has more than quadrupled from four years ago.
However, under the current law, brokers cannot be held liable.
A bill to punish illegal lodging brokers has been proposed in the National Assembly, but it is pending.
In the meantime, some illegal lodging operators are increasing their tricks, such as asking guests to “ignore if the tourist police talk to them” or “pretend they are visiting a friend’s house.”
Experts point out that as the number of unregistered illegal lodging companies increases, the scale of tax evasion will inevitably increase, and that the legal network must be tightly tightened.
[Koyoung University/Professor of Hotel, Tourism and Food Service Management, Sejong University: The tax evasion problem is that we have to quickly bring these (unregistered accommodations) into the legal system so that they can be registered, and if the shared accommodation law is properly established, it will be possible for us to force only registered accommodations… ]
Airbnb said, “We are reminding lodging operators of the importance of complying with the system,” and “we are also discussing with the government so that a reasonable system can be created.”
