§ 12-08 Liability for Charging, Collecting and Paying the Tax.
RCNY § 12-08
(a)The law requires that upon every taxable occupancy, the operator shall charge and collect the tax from the occupant. The tax to be collected must be charged and stated separately from the rent and shown separately on any record thereof, at the time when the occupancy is contracted and charged for. The tax shall also be stated and separately charged upon every evidence of occupancy or any bill or statement of charge made for said occupancy issued or delivered by the operator. The tax shall be paid by the occupant to the operator as trustee for and on account of the City, and kept separate from all other funds in the possession of the operator and the operator shall be liable for the collection thereof and for the tax. The operator and any officer of any corporate operator shall be personally liable for the tax collected or required to be collected under the law. The operator shall have the same right in respect to collecting the tax from the occupant, or in respect to nonpayment of the tax by the occupant, as if the tax were a part of the rent for the occupancy payable at the time such tax shall become due and owing, including all rights of eviction, dispossession, repossession and enforcement of any innkeeper's lien that he may have in the event of nonpayment of rent by the occupant; provided, however, that the Commissioner of Finance shall be joined as a party in any action or proceeding brought by the operator to collect or enforce collection of the tax.
(b)No operator may absorb the tax required to be collected, or tell the occupant that he will pay such tax, nor may he advertise or hold out to the public in any manner, directly or indirectly, that the tax is not deemed to be an element in the rent. Any operator and any officer of a corporate operator or partner in a partnership which is an operator who willfully fails to charge the tax separately from the rent, or willfully fails to state the tax separately from the rent, or willfully fails to or refuses to collect the tax from the occupant, or refers or causes reference to be made to the tax in any invoice, placard or advertisement in a form other than that required by law, is guilty of a misdemeanor. (See: 19 RCNY § 12-11 for penalties.) (c) Where the occupant has failed to pay and the operator has failed to collect the tax imposed by law, then, in addition to all other rights, obligations and remedies, such tax shall be payable by the occupant directly to the Commissioner of Finance, and it shall be the duty of the occupant to file a return thereof with the Commissioner of Finance and to pay the tax so imposed to the Commissioner of Finance within 15 days after such tax was due.
(d)All monies collected by the operator or charged by him while acting, or purporting to act, under the law must be paid to the City, even though it is judicially determined that the tax was invalidly imposed.
