Flagler County tax collector says majority of short-term rentals identified; enforcement, penalties emphasized

Shelley Edmondson, Flagler County tax collector, told the Flagler County Tourist Development Council on Aug. 12 that county staff are identifying and pursuing short-term vacation rentals that are not remitting the local tourist development tax.

Edmondson said the county has about 1,600 active short-term rental accounts and uses an internet‑monitoring service, Granicus, that has identified more than 3,000 online rental listings and matched roughly 92.8% of those listings to street addresses. "We know who they are," Edmondson said, adding that the county has identified more than 1,400 addresses from the scraping effort and that some properties may have more than one account or management‑company accounts that complicate counts.

The tax collector reviewed how the tax is collected and enforced. She said the local tourist…