"Read my lips: We want to pay taxes,” Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s global head of public policy, told the nation’s mayors in 2016. In the years since, the home-sharing site has repeated the declaration in press releases, op-eds, emails, and on billboards. On its website, Airbnb says it is “democratizing revenue by generating tens of millions of new tax dollars for governments all over the world.”

But when Palm Beach County, Florida, a popular tourist destination, passed an ordinance in October 2018 requiring Airbnb and other short-term rental companies to collect and pay the county’s 6 percent occupancy tax on visits arranged through their sites, Airbnb sued.

Palm Beach County tax collector Anne Gannon wasn’t surprised. “We knew we were going to get sued,” she says. “That’s what they do all over the country. It’s their mode of operation.”

Gannon has been cajoling, threatening, and ordering Airbnb to collect taxes for its hosts since 2014. Five years, three lawsuits, and millions in unpaid occupancy taxes later, she’s still trying. “All we want them to do is pay their taxes,” she says. “They absolutely don’t want to pay their taxes the way we want to collect them. That’s the bottom line.”

Similar dramas are playing out around the country. From Nashville to New Orleans to Honolulu, Airbnb is battling local officials over requests to collect occupancy taxes and ensure that the properties listed on its site comply with zoning and safety rules. In the past five months alone, the company has spent more than half a million dollars to overturn regulations in San Diego and has sued Boston, Miami, and Palm Beach County over local ordinances that require Airbnb to collect taxes or remove illegal listings. Elsewhere, Airbnb has fought city officials over regulations aimed at preventing homes from being transformed into de facto hotels and requests from tax authorities for more specific data about hosts and visits.

Airbnb is engaged in “a city-by-city, block-by-block guerrilla war” against local governments, says Ulrik Binzer, CEO of Host Compliance, which helps cities draft and enforce rules for short-term rentals, sometimes putting it at odds with hosting platforms. “They need to essentially fight every one of these battles like it is the most important battle they have.”

Founded in 2008 as an early champion of the sharing economy by allowing people to rent homes, apartments, and rooms to others, Airbnb has grown into a lodging colossus, offering more than 6 million places to stay in more than 191 countries. Its listings outnumber those of the top six hotel chains combined, helping the company reportedly generate more than $1 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2018. It is valued by investors at $31 billion, making it the country’s second most valuable startup, after Uber. By comparison, Hilton and Marriott’s current market capitalizations are $25 billion and $43 billion, respectively. Earlier this month, Airbnb acquired last-minute hotel booking service HotelTonight, reportedly for more than $400 million.

One reason Airbnb is often a cheap option for travelers: Running a hotel or bed and breakfast is expensive; snapping photos of your home, apartment, or spare room and filling out an online profile is not. Hotels must comply with a litany of health, safety, and zoning rules—as well as register with local agencies and agree to collect certain taxes—before they can book a single guest.

Airbnb maintains that, in some cases, it’s not permitted to collect occupancy taxes required of hotels and other lodgings; it’s also not responsible for ensuring the rooms and homes listed on its sites comply with zoning or health regulations. The company says it follows local and state laws but considers itself a “platform,” serving merely to connect hosts and visitors, rather than a lodging provider—more akin to Facebook than Marriott.