Occupancy tax for short-term rental hosts: a plain-English starter guide
Somewhere between your first booking and your first full year of hosting, the phrase "occupancy tax" shows up. Maybe on a line in your Airbnb transaction history, maybe in a letter from your county. This guide explains what the tax is, how it differs from the income tax you already know, when the platform handles it for you, and how to look up the real answer for your own address on official government sites. It is education for beginners. It is deliberately light on rates, because your rate depends on where your property sits, and the only trustworthy source for that is your own state and local government.
What occupancy tax actually is
Occupancy tax goes by many names: lodging tax, hotel tax, hotel/motel tax, transient occupancy tax, tourist tax, bed tax. Tennessee's Department of Revenue describes its version plainly as "a tax imposed by local governments on the privilege of occupancy in any hotel or similar place that provides accommodations for transients" (TN DOR, Local Occupancy Tax). In everyday terms, it is a percentage added to what a guest pays for a short stay.
Two things about that definition matter for hosts:
- The guest pays it. You collect and pass it on. San Francisco's rules state this directly for its 14% transient occupancy tax on stays under 30 days: the tax is paid by the guest, and the host's job is to collect it and remit it (SF Treasurer & Tax Collector).
- "Hotel tax" covers homes too. Texas applies its state hotel occupancy tax "not only to hotels and motels, but also to bed and breakfasts, condominiums, apartments and houses," and people leasing their houses must collect the tax from guests the same way a hotel does (Texas Comptroller). Florida applies its transient rental taxes to condo units, single-family homes, and vacation houses rented for six months or less (FL DOR, GT-800034).
The trigger is usually the length of stay. San Francisco draws the line at under 30 days. Washington State defines a transient guest as someone you lodge for less than 30 days in a row or less than one month (WA DOR lodging guide). Florida draws it at six months or less. If your guests stay a weekend, you are almost certainly inside the window everywhere.
Occupancy tax is not the same thing as income tax
New hosts often blur these two, and the confusion is expensive because they run on completely different rails.
| Occupancy / lodging tax | Income tax | |
|---|---|---|
| Who bears it | The guest, as a percentage on top of the stay | You, on your rental profit |
| Your role | Collector. You gather it and remit it | Taxpayer. You report income and expenses |
| Who levies it | State, county, and city governments, often in layers | Federal government, plus many states |
| Where it is reported | State or local lodging tax returns, on whatever schedule your jurisdiction sets | Your annual federal return. Rental income generally goes on Schedule E (IRS Topic 415) |
One does not replace the other. Collecting occupancy tax correctly does nothing for your income tax, and the reverse is also true. Even the famous federal break for renting your own residence fewer than 15 days a year, where the IRS says not to report the rental income at all (IRS Topic 415), is an income tax rule. It says nothing about whether your city still expects lodging tax on those nights. For the income side, see our guide to Schedule C versus Schedule E.
The layer cake: state, county, and city can each take a slice
There is rarely one single "occupancy tax." Florida is the clearest illustration. The state charges 6% sales tax on transient rentals, plus any applicable discretionary sales surtax. On top of that, counties can impose their own local option transient rental taxes, "in addition to the 6% state sales tax and any applicable discretionary sales surtax" (FL DOR, GT-800034).
The layers can even go to different offices. In Florida, most counties self-administer their transient rental tax, so the county portion is reported and paid directly to the county while the state portion goes to the Florida Department of Revenue. Two taxes on the same booking, two separate filings.
Example, with a made-up county rate: say a guest pays $600 in rent for a four-night Florida stay. The state layer is 6%, so $600 × 0.06 = $36.00. Now suppose your county's local option transient rental rate were 5%: $600 × 0.05 = $30.00. That would be $66.00 of tax on a $600 stay before any applicable surtax, possibly owed to two different collectors. The 5% here is invented for the arithmetic. Your county's actual rate, and whether it is collected by the state or the county, is listed on Form DR-15TDT. What counts as taxable rental charges, and whether surtax applies, depends on the state's own rules.
Washington works the same way in spirit: short-term operators collect retail sales tax on lodging income, and "most locations in Washington have imposed additional lodging taxes, which apply only to lodging sales" (WA DOR). Texas splits it too: a 6% state hotel occupancy tax, with cities and counties able to have their own local hotel occupancy taxes that you ask them about directly (Texas Comptroller FAQs).
Does Airbnb collect it for me? Sometimes, and rarely all of it
Since states began passing marketplace facilitator laws, booking platforms increasingly collect and remit lodging taxes on hosts' behalf. Airbnb confirms it "automatically collects and remits certain taxes" in certain areas, and in the same breath warns that "Airbnb may collect regional taxes but not local ones in some places" and that hosts "may need to manually collect and remit other applicable taxes" (Airbnb Help Center, article 1036). The word to notice is "certain." Here is how differently three states handle it:
- Tennessee, mandatory: since January 1, 2021, short-term rental marketplaces offering homes for under 30 days must remit the local occupancy tax to the state Department of Revenue (TN DOR). The platform is required by law to handle it for marketplace bookings.
- Texas, by agreement: a platform collects and remits the state hotel occupancy tax only if it has an agreement with the property owner to do so. No agreement means the owner remits state tax to the Comptroller themselves. And either way, the Comptroller tells owners to contact their own county and city about local hotel occupancy tax (Texas Comptroller FAQs). Local tax stays your problem.
- Washington, collected but you still file: Airbnb collects and sends state and local retail sales tax, special hotel/motel taxes, and convention and trade center taxes for its Washington hosts. Yet hosts still must register with the Department of Revenue, report their rental income on an excise tax return, and claim a deduction for the amounts the facilitator already collected (WA DOR). Platform collection did not end the paperwork.
San Francisco adds a fourth pattern: hosts who do business only through a qualified website company such as Airbnb are excused from filing their own TOT returns, while independent hosts must file annually by January 31, including a zero return for periods with no rent received (SF Treasurer & Tax Collector). Take direct bookings on the side and the filing duty comes right back.
How to find your own rate, on official sites only
Skip forums and blog tables, including any table this site could publish. Rates change, and only the government source is current. The routine:
- Start at your state revenue department and search for "hotel occupancy tax," "lodging tax," or "transient rental tax." Examples of the official starting pages: Florida DOR GT-800034, Texas Comptroller Hotel Occupancy Tax, Tennessee DOR Local Occupancy Tax, and the Washington DOR lodging guide.
- Then check the county and city layers. Some states publish a consolidated list. Florida's Form DR-15TDT lists every county's local option transient rental rate and, crucially, whether the money goes to the state or straight to the county. In Texas, the Comptroller's instruction is to contact your county and city directly.
- Confirm what the platform already collects for your exact address in your listing's tax settings, then compare that list against the layers you found in steps 1 and 2. Anything on the government list and missing from the platform list is yours to register for, collect, and remit.
- Note the filing rules even when you owe nothing. Florida law "requires you to file a tax return even if you do not owe sales and use tax" (GT-800034), and San Francisco expects zero returns from registered independent hosts. Silence is a compliance failure in these systems.
The record-keeping checklist
Whatever your jurisdiction decides, the bookkeeping that keeps you safe is the same short list, kept per booking:
- Gross rental charge for the stay, before platform fees
- Tax collected on the booking, and by whom: you or the platform
- Which layer each collected amount belongs to: state, county, city
- Nights and dates, since length of stay decides whether the tax applies at all
- Filing calendar: which returns you owe, to which office, by when, including zero returns
- Confirmation numbers or receipts for every remittance
The StaySums workbook has a column for tax collected on each booking and a recurring occupancy tax reminder, so filing deadlines surface next to the income they relate to instead of living in your head. Platform-collected and self-collected amounts stay visibly separate, which is exactly the split Washington's deduction system and Texas's state-versus-local split demand. If you are still building the habit of logging bookings at all, start with our guide to tracking Airbnb income and expenses, and keep host fees out of your gross income numbers while you are at it.