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Whether or not it is present on a booking platform like Airbnb, all travelers staying in your vacation rental must pay a tourist tax. To better understand how to collect and then remit this tourist tax, Welkeys, your Airbnb property management service, explains how it works in this article, updated in October 2025 to reflect the latest regulatory and pricing changes.
What is the tourist tax?
French municipalities can collect what is known as a tourist tax from tourists staying in accommodations within their territory. This tax, created by a 1910 law and significantly reformed by the 2015 Finance Act, applies to tourist accommodations. This includes tourist hotels, campsites, tourist residences, youth hostels, luxury hotels, and your vacation rental. Indeed, when you host tourists in your short-term rental, these visits generate expenses for the municipality where it is located. This tourist tax is paid directly into the tourist office's budget and helps optimize tourism promotion and improve visitor reception capacity.
Do I need to collect the tourist tax, or pay it?
The tourist tax is paid by vacationers staying in your vacation rental, and you are then required to remit it to the government. To collect the tourist tax, you must specify the amount per person per night in your listing so that your guests can budget for the payment. Once you have collected the tourist tax when welcoming guests to your vacation rental, you must remit it. To do so, simply pay the amount collected to the local accountant by the dates set by your municipal council. If your town hall has implemented it, you can file this declaration online, as is the case for the city of Paris, for example. To find out if your municipality offers this online service, you can check your town hall's website.
I have entrusted my property to a management service; what should I do?
Like all vacation rental owners, you are required to collect, declare, and pay the tourist tax to your town hall. Some platforms, such as Airbnb, have automated the collection of the tourist tax and remit it directly to the relevant municipalities. In this case, you are only required to declare the number of nights rented and the number of guests per stay to your town hall. Regarding Booking.com, the situation may vary depending on your municipality. In some cities, the platform automatically collects the tourist tax, but this feature must be enabled in your extranet account. In other cases, you must declare and pay the tourist tax according to your town hall's instructions. It is recommended to check your settings on Booking.com to ensure the tax is being collected.
Please note that your property management service cannot collect the tourist tax from these platforms on your behalf.
How much does the tourist tax cost?
Before the start of the tourist season, i.e., the collection period, the tourist tax rate is set by your municipal council or the EPCI. You can view the rates applied by your municipality. However, there are minimum and maximum thresholds to respect based on your type of accommodation, and the amount can vary between €0.20 and €4.80 per person per night (2025 scale). The following are exempt from this tax:
- people under 18 years of age,
- people with a seasonal employment contract working in the municipality,
- people receiving emergency accommodation or temporary relocation,
- people occupying premises managed by associations where the rent is lower than the amount determined by the municipal council.
Please note: in some regions, additional taxes are added to the base tourist tax. This is particularly the case in the Île-de-France region, where a 200% additional tax applies, which can triple the base amount of the tourist tax.
SUMMARY TABLE OF 2025 RATES
What about the tourist tax with Airbnb?
In some cities, the Airbnb booking platform has entered into agreements with local authorities regarding the collection of the tourist tax. In such cases, Airbnb calculates the applicable local taxes to collect them directly from travelers when they make their booking. Subsequently, the booking platform remits the collected amount to the tax authorities on behalf of its hosts. Thanks to this feature, the tourist tax is automated, simplifying payment for both vacation rental owners and travelers. Since January 2020, the law has required platforms like Airbnb to automatically collect and remit the tourist tax on behalf of all hosts (professional or otherwise) for all French municipalities registered with the tax authorities. Airbnb now collects this tax in the vast majority of French tourist municipalities, far beyond the 50 cities initially covered. Furthermore, the platform notifies its hosts as soon as a new agreement is implemented in their municipality. When this feature is enabled, you will see an additional line with the tourist tax amount appear on your Airbnb listing.
You can now check the availability of this feature by going to your Airbnb account, then to the Manage listing tab, under the Address section. If taxes have been collected and remitted on your behalf, you will see the amount displayed at the bottom of the page. Additionally, you can view the details of collected taxes by visiting your transaction history.
Please note that once this system is in place, the amount remitted to you does not change. You will continue to receive your accommodation fees, minus Airbnb service fees. On the Airbnb page dedicated to the tourist tax, you will find all the legislative texts related to tax collection, as well as a Frequently Asked Questions section to answer all your questions. Furthermore, on this page, each town hall has a dedicated space to view the amount of taxes it has collected.
Since June 2024, platforms can also participate in a pilot program allowing for the centralized declaration of the tourist tax to the tax authorities (FARITAS service), further simplifying procedures for all municipalities involved.
Understanding how the tourist tax works allows you to manage your vacation rental with complete peace of mind. Thanks to the automation offered by platforms like Airbnb, this tax obligation is becoming increasingly simple to manage on a daily basis.
If you have any questions about the tourist tax applicable to your property or would like assistance with the full management of your short-term rental, don't hesitate to contact Welkeys. Our expertise in Airbnb concierge services ensures regulatory compliance and the optimization of your rental income.
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