'No statutory requirement'

The number of short-term rentals operating in Saratoga is unknown, unless the town creates an ordinance to track those with a permitting process.

Airdna and another website which tracks these statistics do not agree, as previously reported in the Saratoga Sun.

AirDNA and Key Data are the only two websites that provide this data information. Key Data, a vacation rental market data company based in the United Kingdom, cannot provide numbers more specific than Carbon County.

The town does not require short-term rentals to have a business permit and makes no attempt to track them, said Emery Penner, town planning administrator.

AirDNA.com reports the town has 147 vacation rentals.

The Sun contacted the Wyoming Department of Revenue, which collects the lodging taxes on short-term rentals, but the Department of Revenue could not provide the number of vacation rentals in Saratoga.

Bret Fanning, the administrator of the Wyoming Department of Revenue, said the DOR administers the collection of lodging tax in Wyoming.

“I can provide a list of lodging establishments in Carbon County and specifically for Saratoga,” Fanning said in an email in response to the question by The Sun. “I know this isn’t the information you are looking for though. Based on conversations that I’ve had with communities around Wyoming, you are likely looking for the number of properties in your area that are being used as short-term rentals. That’s a number we don’t have. If those short-term rentals are being marketed through a licensed online platform, the online platform is responsible to collect and report the sales and lodging tax to us. There is no statutory requirement for the online platforms to disclose which properties are being rented in Wyoming. If a short-term rental property isn’t going through a licensed online platform, that’s a different story and that property owner would need to be licensed with us. In my recent experiences, most property owners nowadays are going through national online platforms for a bigger audience.

“The statutory language works similarly for large online retail platforms that you may shop from on a routine basis. The Wyoming Department or Revenue—and most other states—doesn’t have to license thousands of individual sellers because our Wyoming marketplace facilitator statutes have the online retail platform responsible to collect and report the Wyoming sales tax. This system works well most of the time, but it doesn’t help answer your question about how many individuals are renting personal residences in your town and those associated impacts.”

The Sun could not find the number of short-term rentals reported anywhere other than on AirDNA.

“AirDNA is proud to provide the most accurate and comprehensive vacation rental data and analytics in the world,” as stated on https://www.airdna.co/airdna-data-how-it-works. “Our goal is to empower the democratization of lodging and to help everyone from hosts to property managers and investors navigate their markets and achieve their short-term rental goals.”