Short-Term Rental Taxes in Florida: Tourist Tax, Sales Tax & Filing

If you rent a place nightly in Broward County, the booking revenue isn’t all yours — a slice belongs to the state and the county, and someone has to collect it, file it, and pay it on time. This guide breaks down Florida short term rental taxes in plain English: what you owe, who collects what, how registration works, and how often you file.

The taxes themselves aren’t complicated once you see the structure. The trouble usually comes from assuming a booking platform handles everything — and then learning, sometimes from an auditor, that you were still on the hook.

The two layers of Florida short term rental taxes

Renting living or sleeping accommodations for six months or less is a taxable activity in Florida. For a nightly rental near the beach, there are two main layers stacked on top of the nightly rate guests pay:

• State sales and use tax — Florida’s statewide tax on transient (short-stay) rentals, administered by the Florida Department of Revenue (DOR). Some counties also add a small discretionary surtax on top of the state rate.
• Broward County tourist development tax — a county-level “bed tax” on short stays, often called tourist tax, bed tax, or resort tax. In Broward this is administered by the county, not the state.

The simplest way to think about it: the state takes a sales-tax cut, and Broward County takes a separate tourist-tax cut. Both apply to the same short stay, and both have to be reported — usually to two different agencies.

These are taxes you collect from the guest and pass through. They’re not income tax. You add them to the booking, hold them, and remit them. Whether they show up as a separate line or are baked into your nightly price, the obligation is the same.

Typical tax structure (illustrative)

Rates change and depend on your exact address and the current rules, so treat the table below as a shape, not a quote. Always confirm the current numbers with the Florida DOR and Broward County before you price or file.

Layer	Who administers it	Roughly how it works
State sales tax	Florida Dept. of Revenue	Statewide rate on the rental charge
Discretionary surtax	Florida Dept. of Revenue (county-set)	Small county add-on, where it applies
Tourist development tax	Broward County	County “bed tax” on the same short stay

The combined percentage a guest sees is the sum of these layers. In practice, owners across South Florida budget for a meaningful combined rate — frequently in the low double digits as a percentage of the rental charge — but you must verify the current figures for your property.

Who actually collects — platform vs. owner

This is where most owners get tripped up. Platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo may collect and remit some of these taxes automatically for bookings made through them — but coverage varies by platform, by tax, and over time.

A few realities to plan around:

• A platform might collect state sales tax but not the Broward tourist development tax — or the reverse — and the split can change.
• Bookings you take directly (your own website, repeat guests, other channels) usually have no platform collecting anything. That’s all on you.
• Even when a platform collects, you may still need to be registered and file returns, sometimes showing the platform-collected amounts as exempt so the agency knows it was paid.

Bottom line: the property owner is responsible for making sure every applicable tax is collected, reported, and paid — whether a platform helped or not.

Assuming “Airbnb handles it” is the single most expensive assumption in this whole topic. If you’re weighing a switch to nightly rentals, build tax handling into the plan from day one — see our step-by-step conversion guide for how it fits alongside furnishing, licensing, and pricing.

Registration: where you sign up

Before you collect a dime of tax, you generally need to register with the agencies that levy it:

• Florida Department of Revenue — register for a sales tax account to collect and remit the state sales tax (and surtax) on transient rentals.
• Broward County — register with the county’s tax administration to collect and remit the tourist development tax.

Registration is separate from the licensing and permitting you also need to operate legally. Taxes and licenses are different boxes to check, and you typically need both. For the licensing side, start with do you need a short-term rental license in Broward County, and for city-specific rules see our Hollywood, FL short-term rental rules guide. If your property is in Hallandale Beach, the local Airbnb rules, permits and taxes walk through that city’s specifics.

Filing cadence: how often you remit

Once registered, you file returns and remit what you’ve collected on a regular schedule — even in months with zero bookings, you usually still file a return (often a “zero” return).

• State sales tax (DOR): filing frequency is typically assigned based on your volume — commonly monthly, sometimes quarterly for smaller operations. Returns and payment are generally due the month after the collection period.
• Broward tourist development tax: the county sets its own filing schedule, frequently monthly, with its own due dates and its own portal.

A few habits that keep owners out of trouble:

1. Hold tax money separately so it’s there when the return is due — it was never your revenue.
2. File on time, every period, including zero-booking months.
3. Keep clean records of gross rents, exempt amounts, and what you remitted.

Late or missed filings tend to trigger penalties and interest, and Florida agencies do audit short-term rentals — so consistency matters more than perfection.

How 360 handles the tax busywork

This is exactly the kind of recurring, deadline-driven work that quietly eats an owner’s time — and where a mistake is costly. As part of full-service management, 360 Property Managers handles tax collection and remittance on the bookings we manage and provides tax-ready statements so you (or your CPA) have clean, organized numbers at filing time. We coordinate the platform-collected versus owner-collected pieces so nothing falls through the cracks.

It’s one part of the broader operating load full-service management absorbs. For how that load — and its cost — actually pencils out, see what short-term rental management costs and what you get.

The quick checklist

• Register with the Florida DOR for sales tax
• Register with Broward County for tourist development tax
• Confirm exactly which taxes your platform collects — and which it doesn’t
• Add tax to direct bookings yourself
• File every period on time, including zero months
• Keep records and reconcile platform payouts
• Verify all current rates and rules with the state and county

Get this right and the taxes are just a predictable line item. Get it wrong and it becomes a back-tax bill with penalties attached — which is the whole reason owners hand it off.

Want to see what your property could net after taxes, fees, and operating costs? We’ll build you a free, property-specific projection. Get your free ROI estimate → — or if you’re ready to make the switch, start with our short-term rental conversion service.

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Tax rates, agencies, and rules change frequently and depend on your exact address — always verify current city, county, and state requirements with the Florida Department of Revenue and Broward County before collecting or filing. This is general information, not tax or legal advice.