City hall has written to Airbnb and its rivals Homeaway, Paris Attitude, Sejourning and Windu to tell them to remove from their website any property which has not been registered in line with new rules brought in on December 1, deputy mayor Ian Brossat said.
If they fail to comply, “we will take the matter to the relevant jurisdiction, in this case the Paris high court,” he said.
The city has singled out 1,000 ads for rental properties on Airbnb which have not been registered and which fail to display the registration number in their ads, and around 100 each on the other rental sites.
Airbnb has come under heavy scrutiny in France, where tax authorities are tightening the noose around homeowners who fail to declare their rental income for tax purposes.
Earlier this month, the government summoned Airbnb’s local managers to demand answers over a system allowing homeowners to be paid onto a prepaid credit card – a mechanism suspected of facilitating tax avoidance.