Short-term rentals: sales tax, the tourist tax, and the county

Florida does not tax the income from a short-term rental, because it taxes no one’s income. It taxes the rent instead, at the moment the guest pays it. Every rental of living or sleeping accommodations for six months or less carries the 6% state sales tax, the county’s discretionary sales surtax where there is one, and a local tourist development tax of up to 6% that the county sets and in most counties collects itself. In Orange, Miami-Dade, Pinellas and most of the large counties the three together are 12% to 13% on top of the rent (verify). The owner is the dealer: registered with the Department of Revenue, licensed by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and filing returns whether or not a platform handled the money.

The platforms have made the collecting easier and the compliance more confusing. Airbnb, Vrbo and the others collect the state tax and surtax on every Florida booking and remit it under their own registration, and in a growing list of counties they collect the tourist tax too. An owner who rents only through a platform in one of those counties may owe nothing further for that booking. The same owner who takes a direct booking from a repeat guest, or who lists in a county that administers its own tourist tax and has no platform agreement, is back to collecting and filing. The rest of this article is about knowing which of those two owners you are.

What counts as a transient rental

The Department’s brochure GT-800034 draws the line at six months. A rental of living or sleeping accommodations for a period of six months or less is a transient rental and is taxable; a rental under a bona fide written lease for continuous residence longer than six months is exempt, and a tenant who has in fact lived continuously in one accommodation for more than six months becomes exempt from the seventh month on. The test is the length of the stay, not the kind of property. A furnished condominium rented to the same snowbird for five months every winter is a transient rental; the same unit rented to a nurse for a seven-month contract under a written lease is not.

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation uses a different line for licensing, under Chapter 509. A dwelling or condominium unit rented to guests more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 days, or one calendar month, whichever is less, or advertised as a place regularly rented to guests, is a transient public lodging establishment and needs a vacation rental license. The two definitions overlap but are not the same: a unit rented for five months to one tenant needs sales tax collection but no license; a unit rented four times for a week each needs both. An owner who rents a single room in the house they live in is outside the licensing rule, though not outside the sales tax.

The three taxes, and who collects them

The state tax and surtax go to the Department of Revenue on the sales and use tax return, Form DR-15, which an owner files monthly, quarterly, semiannually or annually depending on how much tax was collected the year before. Returns are due on the first of the month after the period and late after the 20th. Transient rentals have their own line on the return. An electronic filer who pays on time keeps a collection allowance of 2.5% of the first $1,200 of tax, up to $30 a return; a paper filer keeps nothing. Anyone who paid $5,000 or more in sales tax in the state’s prior fiscal year must file electronically (verify).

The tourist development tax is the county’s bed tax, authorized by section 125.0104 and levied at 1% to 6% depending on the county’s population and what its voters have approved. A county may let the Department collect it alongside the state tax, in which case it rides on the DR-15, or may collect it itself through the county tax collector, in which case the owner registers with the county separately and files a second return, usually monthly, on the county’s own portal. Most counties with any tourism to speak of self-administer. The Department’s list of counties whose tax it collects runs to small inland counties: Bradford, Citrus, Columbia, DeSoto, Dixie, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Glades, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Levy, Madison, Okeechobee, Wakulla and Washington (verify). Everyone else deals with the county.

Registration with the Department is on the Florida Business Tax Application, Form DR-1, filed online at no charge. The application asks the owner to mark the activity “rent or lease living or sleeping accommodations to others for periods of six months or less,” and each rental property is a separate location under the same account. An owner who uses a management company can let the company register as the agent and file for all the units it manages, on Form DR-1C; the owner is then not the dealer for those rentals but remains liable if the agent fails to remit (verify).

What the platforms collect, and what they do not

Airbnb has collected the Florida state transient rental tax and the discretionary surtax on every Florida booking since 2015 under a statewide agreement with the Department, and Vrbo and the other large platforms have followed. For county tourist taxes, the platforms sign agreements county by county. Airbnb’s own list of counties where it collects the tourist tax includes Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Hernando, Hillsborough, Indian River, Lake, Lee, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Sarasota, Seminole, Taylor and Volusia, plus the 21 small counties whose tax the state collects (verify). Several large counties, Palm Beach, Monroe, Walton, Duval, Osceola, Bay and St. Johns among them, are not on that list as of this writing (verify), and in those the owner collects the tourist tax on platform bookings and files it with the county.

Three things the platform agreements do not do. They do not register the owner; the Department’s position is that an owner renting transient accommodations is a dealer who must hold a certificate of registration even if every dollar of tax is remitted by someone else, and the DBPR requires the sales tax number before it issues the vacation rental license (verify). They do not cover direct bookings, repeat guests who pay by check, or a listing on a smaller site without an agreement; those are the owner’s to collect and file. And they do not file the owner’s return. An owner whose only bookings came through a platform with full collection still owes a DR-15 for each period, reporting the platform rentals as exempt or as collected by the marketplace, so that the Department does not assess tax on the gross rent it sees from the 1099-K (verify). A return that says zero is a return; no return is a delinquency.

A 2024 bill that would have made the platforms responsible for every Florida rental tax passed the legislature and was vetoed in June 2024; nothing has replaced it. The patchwork is the law for the 2026 season.

The DBPR license and the local layer

The vacation rental license is issued by the Division of Hotels and Restaurants in the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. A single license covers one house or townhouse, or units in one building, owned and operated by the same person; a group license is issued to a licensed agent for all units in a building; a collective license to an agent for up to 75 units at separate addresses in one district. For 2026 a new single-unit license costs a $50 application fee, a $10 hospitality education fee and a full-year fee of $170, or $90 for a half year (verify); renewals are the $10 fee plus the annual fee, due on the district’s renewal date, which is October 1 for the Miami district and June 1 for the Jacksonville district (verify). The license must be displayed at the property, and the large platforms ask for the number when a Florida listing is created (verify).

Beneath the state are the cities and counties, and the state has preempted part of what they may do. Since 2011 a local government may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate their duration or frequency, except under ordinances adopted before June 1, 2011, which is why Miami Beach and a handful of other cities still enforce minimum-stay rules that would be illegal if adopted today (verify). Everything else is open to local regulation: registration, inspections, occupancy limits, parking, noise, and a local business tax receipt, which most cities and counties require and which is a separate fee from the DBPR license. An owner in Hillsborough County, for example, needs the DBPR license, the state sales tax registration, the county tourist tax account and the county business tax receipt before the first guest arrives.

The federal side

The IRS does not care about the Florida taxes except as a cost of doing business; sales and tourist tax the owner collects and remits is excluded from income if it is kept out of gross receipts, or deducted if it was included. The federal questions are the same ones as anywhere else, and three of them decide most Florida returns.

The 14-day rule. If the property is a residence and is rented for fewer than 15 days in the year, the rent is not reported and no rental expenses are deducted. A Gainesville family that rents the house for two football weekends and a Tampa household that rents during the Super Bowl are inside this rule, whatever the rent. The rule is in Publication 527 and Topic 415, and it is the only place in the Code where income is simply ignored.

Residence or rental. If personal use during the year is more than the greater of 14 days or 10% of the days rented at a fair price, the dwelling is a residence for the year. Rent is reported and expenses are split by days, but the rental expenses cannot produce a loss; what is left over carries forward. A Florida second home used for two weeks in March and rented the rest of the season is right on the line, and the owner who keeps a calendar can stay on the right side of it. Days spent at the property doing repairs do not count as personal days; days a relative uses it free do.

Schedule E or Schedule C. Rent from real estate goes on Schedule E and is not subject to self-employment tax. Publication 527 moves it to Schedule C when the owner provides substantial services primarily for the guest’s convenience, and the examples it gives are regular cleaning during the stay, changing linens and maid service. Cleaning between guests, a welcome basket and a lockbox code are not substantial services; daily housekeeping, breakfast and a concierge are. Most Florida vacation rentals belong on Schedule E. The owner who runs a Keys property like a small inn has moved to Schedule C and owes self-employment tax on the profit.

Two more rules reach a Florida owner. The passive activity rules treat a rental with an average stay of seven days or less as a business rather than a rental for the purpose of the loss rules, which is the origin of the short-term rental loophole promoted online: an owner who materially participates in a nightly rental can use its losses, including bonus depreciation, against wages. The participation test is real and the hours have to be documented. And Florida’s tangible personal property tax reaches the furniture: a furnished rental is a business, and its furnishings, appliances and equipment are reported to the county property appraiser on Form DR-405 by April 1, with the first $25,000 of value exempt if the return is filed. Most owners of one furnished condominium owe nothing after the exemption, but only if they file.