Florida’s Hotel Tax: Rates, HB 7031, and Who Collects

Florida’s hotel tax has two parts: a 6% state transient rental tax that applies statewide, and a county-level Tourist Development Tax (often called the bed tax) that ranges from roughly 3% to 6% depending on where you stay. Combined, guests typically see 9% to 12% in lodging taxes added to their bill, and a discretionary county sales surtax can push the total higher. A 2025 law, House Bill 7031, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis on June 30 and effective July 1, expanded what counties can spend the bed tax portion on.¹

What Guests Actually Pay on a Florida Hotel Stay

The 6% state tax on transient rentals sits under Florida Statute 212.03 and applies to any rental of living quarters or sleeping accommodations for six months or less.² Hotels, motels, condominiums, vacation rentals, timeshare units rented to non-owners, mobile home parks, and RV parks all fall under it. The tax applies to the total rental charge, including mandatory fees like cleaning charges or resort fees.

On top of that state tax, the county where you stay may add a Tourist Development Tax under Florida Statute 125.0104.³ The TDT is a local option tax; the state does not impose it directly, and not every county levies the maximum. Actual rates run from 3% to 6% depending on which layers a county has adopted, according to the Florida Department of Revenue.⁴ Some counties also impose a discretionary sales surtax that stacks on top, and in the highest-rate counties a guest can see combined lodging taxes reach 12% to 13%.

These two taxes flow to different places. The state transient rental tax goes to the Florida Department of Revenue. The county TDT goes to the county tax collector. That split matters for operators, and it also explains why the two components move independently when rates change.

How the County Bed Tax Rate Is Built

A county’s TDT rate is stacked in layers rather than set as a single number. Each layer requires specific conditions or approvals:

A base levy of 1% or 2%, adopted by the county governing board.
An additional 1%, available to counties that have levied the base tax for at least three years and approved by local referendum.
A professional sports and convention center levy of up to 1%, dedicated to debt service on those facilities or to tourism advertising.
A high-tourism-impact levy of 1%, available where annual taxable rentals exceed $600 million, or where rentals make up at least 18% of the county’s total taxable sales with a $200 million minimum.
An additional tourism levy of 1% for counties that already impose the sports and convention center layer.

Fully stacked, a county can reach 6% TDT. The Office of Economic and Demographic Research publishes an annual county-by-county rate table if you need the exact figure for a specific destination.⁵

What HB 7031 Changed in 2025

The 2025 law, cataloged as Chapter 2025-208, did not change the rate structure or the total percentage guests pay. It changed what counties are allowed to do with the bed tax revenue they collect.¹ Two additions:

Counties adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean can now use TDT revenue to pay for beach lifeguard services. Before the change, lifeguard salaries and equipment came out of the general fund, even in beach towns where most of the people being protected were visitors. Coastal counties can now cover those costs from visitor-generated dollars.

The law also relaxes spending restrictions for fiscally constrained coastal counties, letting them direct TDT funds toward certain public facilities that serve the tourism district. These counties often lack the property tax base or bonding capacity to fund tourism-related infrastructure on their own, and the change gives them a revenue source that grows as visitor volume grows.

What Bed Tax Money Funds Overall

The new uses sit on top of an existing list of authorized expenditures. Counties can only spend TDT revenue on purposes named in statute, which include:³

Building, expanding, and operating publicly owned convention centers, sports stadiums, and arenas.
Publicly owned or qualifying nonprofit museums and aquariums open to the public.
Advertising Florida as a destination at the state, national, and international levels, where tourist attraction is a main purpose of the activity being funded.
Tourist bureaus and information centers, run either as county agencies or through contracts with chambers of commerce.
Beach and shoreline work, including renourishment, erosion control, beach park facilities, and channel and estuary maintenance.
Promotion of publicly owned or nonprofit zoological parks open to the public.

One boundary worth noting: counties that have earmarked TDT funds as the local match for federal beach renourishment cannot redirect those specific dollars to other uses, even under the expanded authority.

What Operators Have to Collect and When

If you run a hotel, motel, vacation rental, or any short-term accommodation in Florida, you are the “dealer” responsible for collecting both the 6% state transient rental tax and the county TDT from guests. Tax applies to the total rental charge, including mandatory fees, and is due when you receive payment for the stay.²

Remittance is generally monthly. You file a return and pay the collected TDT to the county tax collector, or in some counties to the Department of Revenue, following the format of Form DR-15TDT. The return and payment must be postmarked by the 20th of the month following the reporting period.⁴ Timely filers earn a small collection allowance to offset administrative costs.

Miss the deadline and the collection allowance disappears. A late filer also faces a penalty of 10% of the tax due for each month or partial month the return is delinquent, with a minimum of $50 and a maximum of 50% of the total tax owed. Interest accrues on the unpaid balance on top of that. These figures compound quickly, and the state is not flexible about them.

When Airbnb or VRBO Collects for You

Airbnb, VRBO, and other platforms have voluntary collection agreements with many Florida counties, under which the platform collects the TDT at checkout and remits it directly to the county tax collector. Whether that happens for your listing depends entirely on which county your property is in and whether your platform has signed an agreement with that county.

Coverage is not universal. Smaller booking sites may not have agreements at all, and even where a platform does collect, you should verify that it is applying the correct local rate. Rate changes take time to propagate through platform systems. If a platform under-collects or fails to remit, the responsibility still lands on you as the property operator, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.

Federal Reporting on Rental Income

Florida’s hotel tax rules don’t alter your federal obligations, but they interact with them. Short-term rental income is reported on Schedule E, and IRS Publication 527 covers the rules for residential rental property, including deductible expenses, depreciation, and passive activity limits.⁶

If a booking platform pays you, it may issue a Form 1099-K reporting the gross amount of those payments. That gross figure is not adjusted for platform fees, refunds, or taxes the platform collected and remitted on your behalf.⁷ The number on the form will usually exceed your actual taxable income, and you reconcile the difference when you file. Keep detailed records of platform fees, refunded bookings, and any TDT or state sales tax the platform collected, because you will need them to document the gap between the 1099-K total and what you actually earned.

1
Florida Senate. House Bill 7031 – 2025
2
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 212.03 – Transient Rentals Tax
3
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 125.0104 – Tourist Development Tax
4
Florida Department of Revenue. Local Option Taxes
5
Office of Economic and Demographic Research. 2025 Local Option Tourist Tax Rates in Florida Counties
6
Internal Revenue Service. About Publication 527, Residential Rental Property
7
Internal Revenue Service. What to Do with Form 1099-K