Victoria, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Victoria, British Columbia and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term renting is still perfectly legal here, and the bad news is that it's legal in one shape only: your own home, with you living in it. Victoria sits at the southern tip of Vancouver Island inside the Capital Regional District, and both the city and the province spent the last two years narrowing what counts as a lawful short-term rental, so whatever you read about this market in 2023 no longer describes it.

That narrowing landed hardest on one group, and if you own a downtown condo here you're almost certainly in it. Back in July 2023, the City's own Committee of the Whole report on short-term rentals counted 730 licences, of which 627 were non-principal condo units riding on legal non-conforming zoning, against only 103 held by people letting rooms in the home they lived in. British Columbia then stripped legal non-conforming protection away on May 1, 2024, and Victoria rewrote its own bylaws that August to match. So the non-principal licence class is gone, with no successor category, no grandfathering, and no fee you can pay to bring it back.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: what the zoning permits, what the $150 licence involves, the documents that get applications sent straight back, the three taxes stacked on every night you sell, how hard the City pushes when you skip any of it, and who to call when something doesn't fit. Every figure below comes from the City of Victoria's or the Province's own bylaws and pages, checked in July 2026, and where a number moves I've said so. Assuming you're weighing Victoria against markets where a whole unit can still go on Airbnb, run both through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Victoria, British Columbia?

Before you can compare Victoria to anywhere else, you need to know what the city will let you sell, and that answer comes out of three separate rulebooks rather than one.

The first is zoning, and it decides whether your plan is possible at all. Schedule D of the Zoning Regulation Bylaw No. 80-159, amended on August 1, 2024, treats a short-term rental as a home occupation, the same category as a bookkeeper or a hairdresser working out of the house. Section 6(2)(m) prohibits it outright, and then section 12 hands back a narrow permission with four conditions attached:

• No more than two bedrooms may be used for short-term rental, and the rental cannot occupy an entire self-contained dwelling unit.
• The entire principal residence may be rented while the operator is temporarily away, provided it's used that way no more than 160 nights in a calendar year.
• No liquor may be provided to short-term rental guests.
• No sign may be erected or maintained to advertise the short-term rental.

Read those two clauses together and the business model falls out of them. While you're home, you can let two bedrooms and share the rest of the house. While you're away, you can let the whole place, yet only up to 160 nights a year, which is a hair under 44% occupancy even if you never sleep in your own bed on a weekend.

The second rulebook is the licence. The Short-Term Rental Regulation Bylaw No. 18-036, consolidated to August 2024, defines a short-term rental as renting a dwelling unit "or any part of it, for a period of less than 30 nights", which sweeps in strata hotels and vacation rentals while leaving out time-shares occupied by their owners. Its definition of principal residence is harder to argue with than most, since it means "the residence in which an individual resides for a longer period of time in a calendar year than any other place." One home, per person, per year, and section 3(2)(e) makes you prove it before a licence is issued.

The third rulebook is provincial, and I'll come back to it further down, though it's worth knowing now that it sits above both of the others and that the stricter rule always wins.

There is one genuine exception, and it's small enough to list in full. Short-Term Rental Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 24-060 bans strata hotels in every zone unless a zone expressly permits them, and only the Old Town District-1 zone does, alongside four named buildings in the new Schedule U: 100 Harbour Road, 500 Oswego Street, 810 Humboldt Street and 1234 Wharf Street. Unless your title sits in one of those, that route isn't open to you, and buying into one doesn't hand you the exemption automatically either.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Victoria

Unfortunately for most people reading this, those four addresses are where the investment case ends. If your plan was to buy a Victoria condo, furnish it, and run it on Airbnb at nightly rates while you live somewhere else, that plan is no longer legal, and no permit, licence or corporate structure reopens it.

What's left is a room-share, and the economics look different because of it. You live in the property, you register it, and you either let two bedrooms year-round while you're there or hand over the whole place for up to 160 nights while you're away. Both are real. Neither is the one most people arrive looking for.

There's a wrinkle here that catches even careful hosts, because the province and the city don't say the same thing. British Columbia's principal residence requirement permits a host's principal residence plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property, which sounds like permission to run the garden suite.

Victoria's zoning doesn't grant that, though. Schedule D permits the home occupation in the principal residence, capped at two bedrooms, and the older transient accommodation clause beside it caps a property at one such use. So if you were counting on the basement suite as a second listing, do check the wording with the City's zoning desk first, because the stricter rule governs and the stricter rule is Victoria's.

Tenants aren't shut out, mind you. The City accepts applications from renters as long as the owner consents in writing, and in a strata you'll also need an executive member to confirm that no strata bylaw prohibits the use. Keep in mind that both consents are signatures on the City's own form, so you're asking your landlord and your strata council on the record. Plenty of applications die at exactly that step.

Assuming none of this fits, the honest pivot is still a stay of 30 nights or longer. Anything at 30 nights or above isn't a short-term rental under Bylaw 18-036 at all, so it needs no licence and falls under ordinary residential tenancy rules instead, which is where a good deal of Victoria's former nightly inventory went after 2024. It's the same direction most comparable BC markets are pushing owners, as the Chilliwack regulation guide and the Maple Ridge regulation guide both show on the Lower Mainland.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirements in Victoria

So let's say your home clears all of that and you're the person living in it. Section 3(1) of Bylaw 18-036 then requires two things at once, not one: a valid short-term rental licence under that bylaw and a licence under the City's Business Licence Bylaw. The short-term rental licence fee itself is set at $150 by section 3(3), unchanged as of July 2026, which is the same number the principal-resident class has carried since 2018, while the $1,500 non-principal fee that used to sit beside it went away with the class it belonged to.

The City's short-term rental page is blunt about when you need it. The licence covers advertising and operating, there's no grace period, and posting a listing before approval is itself the offence. Your application may also trigger an inspection by City staff to confirm the space matches what you've described.

The licence year runs on its own calendar, which trips people up more than the fee does. The 2026 application form states that licences run January 16 to January 15, are non-transferable, and that fees are non-refundable. Every one must then be re-applied for at the start of each calendar year with up-to-date documents, so this isn't a renewal in the usual sense. It's a fresh application, annually, with fresh paperwork. All 2025 licences expired on January 15, 2026, and the form adds that a regulation change leaving you ineligible mid-year brings no refund or discount.

Getting one issued in the first place turns on section 3(2). It asks for four things: the Licence Inspector's form, the fee, evidence that you own the premises or that the owner consents, and a strata council letter confirming that nothing in the strata bylaws or the Strata Property Act blocks the use. Then comes the one that decides most applications, since paragraph (e) wants evidence, satisfactory to the Inspector, that the premises are your principal residence. Where any of that falls short, or where the operation would contravene another City bylaw or enactment, section 4 lets the Inspector refuse outright.

Two ongoing duties attach the moment you're licensed, and both carry their own fines:

• Your licence number goes in every advertisement. Section 5 allows you to offer premises for short-term rent "only if a valid business licence number is included in any advertising, listing, or promotion material". That covers your Airbnb page, your Vrbo page, a private site, and a Facebook Marketplace post alike.
• You must name a responsible person and display their details. Under section 6, the name and contact information of a designated responsible person has to be prominently displayed inside the premises at all times while it's operating, and that person must be able to attend within two hours of being asked. You can be your own responsible person while you're in town, yet the moment you're away for a booking you're required to designate someone else.

Getting refused isn't the end of it either. The City's short-term rental appeal process policy confirms that under section 60(5) of the Community Charter, an applicant refused a licence by a municipal officer is entitled to have Council reconsider the decision. That's a public Council agenda item, though, so remember your address and your application go on the record when you appeal.

On top of the City licence, you need a provincial one. Registering as a host with the B.C. short-term rental registry costs $100 plus a $1.50 service fee where you live in the property and $450 plus $1.50 where you don't, renewed annually, with the window opening 40 days before expiry. Since Victoria is a principal-residence community, the $100 tier is the one a compliant host here should be paying, and reaching for the $450 tier usually means something in the plan doesn't match the bylaw.

Required Documents for Victoria Short-Term Rentals

Since that $150 doesn't come back and the licence has to be earned again every January, it's worth getting the package right the first time. The 2026 application form is unusually specific about what it will and won't take. Documents must be current, valid, not folded and easy to read, and it says plainly that "alternate versions or substitutes of this information will not be accepted."

• Government-issued ID stating your address, for each applicant. A driver's licence, BC Services Card or BC Identity Card, since a passport carries no address.
• A home or rental insurance policy document showing the property address, the mailing address and the policy holder.
• A utility bill showing the billing period, the service address and the mailing address. The City wants both addresses visible, which catches anyone whose bills go elsewhere.
• Owner consent, signed by every owner registered on land title. Not the majority of them. All of them.
• Strata council consent, where the property is a strata. It must be signed by an executive member who is expressly not the applicant, so you can't sign your own building's approval even if you sit on the council.
• A signed declaration from any property manager or management company involved in advertising, bookings or guest communication, with their own business licence number and issuing municipality.
• A signed declaration from any cleaning service or other business in the rental, on the same terms.
• Designated responsible person details, with their own signature accepting the two-hour attendance standard.
• Incorporation documents and Notice of Articles, where you're applying as a limited company. Authorizing the City to pull them instead costs $30 plus tax under Administrative Fees Bylaw No. 04-40.

One deadline hides inside all of this, because every consent signature on the form expires: "If your application is received more than 60 days after consent is given above, it is not considered valid consent." So chase your strata in November, file in February, and you'll be chasing them all over again.

The provincial registration then asks for a different set entirely, and some of it is personal. Alongside the property address you'll need the Parcel Identifier (PID) from land title, the bedroom count, the ownership type, and the host's name, contact details, Social Insurance Number and date of birth, plus co-host details where someone shares the operation. Do dig the PID out early, since it's the item people most often stall on.

Victoria Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and in British Columbia it arrives in three layers before income tax even enters the picture.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
GST	5%	You, if you're GST-registered. Otherwise the platform.
PST on accommodation	8%	You, or the online marketplace facilitator
MRDT (City of Victoria)	3%	You, or the online marketplace facilitator

The provincial pieces are the two you'll see on a guest's receipt. B.C.'s accommodation tax rules charge 8% PST on accommodation, and the taxable amount isn't only the room rate, since cleaning, booking and resort fees all fall inside it. Online marketplace facilitators must register and collect both PST and the municipal tax on sales they handle, and they also pay 7% PST on the services they sell you as a host, a cost that rides quietly inside your platform fees.

The municipal layer is the Municipal and Regional District Tax, and Victoria's rate comes straight from the regulation rather than from a city bylaw. Item 23 of Schedule 1 to the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation (93/2013) sets the City of Victoria's rate at 3%, payable to the Greater Victoria Visitors and Convention Bureau, better known as Destination Greater Victoria. Beside that rate sits a fourth column holding a repeal date, and Victoria's reads January 1, 2027, though designations like this get renewed as a matter of routine. So I'd treat 3% as a rate that continues rather than one about to vanish, and do check the regulation again in the new year rather than assuming.

Three exemptions are worth knowing before you price anything. PST and MRDT don't apply to stays of 27 or more consecutive days, nor to accommodation at $30 or less per day, nor to a property earning under $2,500 a year, though those last two both require that the property isn't listed on an online platform. Since almost every Victoria host lists on one, the 27-day threshold is the only exemption that tends to matter, and it's exactly why the mid-term furnished market prices so differently.

GST sits on top at 5%, and the Canada Revenue Agency's rules for platform-based short-term accommodation apply it to accommodation occupied for less than a month at more than $20 a night. Who collects depends on you rather than the platform, since a GST-registered host charges and collects it themselves, including on platform bookings, while the platform must remit where the host isn't registered. Registration becomes mandatory once your taxable supplies pass $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, so a host letting two bedrooms often stays under that line while one letting the whole house for 160 nights may not.

One practical warning about all three. Because facilitator collection turns on the platform and on your own registration status, two hosts on the same street can end up with different remittance duties. Make sure you read your payout statements rather than assuming Airbnb, Vrbo, Expedia and Booking.com behave identically, because they don't have to.

Potential Deductions and Write-Offs

Your net rental income is ordinary taxable income, and the usual costs come off it: the share of mortgage interest, property tax, insurance, utilities, internet, cleaning, supplies, platform fees and repairs attributable to the rented space. Renting rooms inside your own home means apportioning nearly all of that by area and by time, which is fiddlier than a spreadsheet makes it look.

The bigger point about deductions in Canada isn't the arithmetic, though. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions entirely for a "non-compliant short-term rental". That means one operated where short-term rentals aren't permitted, or one that misses any applicable registration, licensing or permit requirement, and the denied share is your expenses multiplied by non-compliant days over total short-term rental days. Since Victoria makes a licence, a provincial registration and a zoning permission all line up before you're compliant, that turns any local slip into a federal tax problem as well. Which is why skipping the $150 licence doesn't save you $150. It can cost you the deductibility of an entire year's operating expenses.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That federal hook only bites because there's a provincial framework for it to hook onto, and British Columbia built one of the most assertive in the country. The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, SBC 2023 c 32 took its main effect on May 1, 2024, and three of its moves reshaped Victoria.

The first was the principal residence requirement. It limits short-term rentals to the host's principal residence plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit, and it applies in municipalities over 10,000 people as well as smaller neighbouring communities within 15 kilometres, which is how Victoria landed on the list. Communities can still opt in or out on a February 28 deadline, with opt-outs effective June 1 and opt-ins effective November 1, so the list genuinely changes from year to year and is worth re-checking rather than remembering.

The second was the removal of legal non-conforming protection. The Province's short-term rental legislation page states it flatly, in the words "protections for non-conforming use of property no longer apply to short term rentals." That one sentence ended the roughly 1,600 Victoria condo units the City had recorded as legal non-conforming, and with them the 627 non-principal licences on issue in mid-2023.

The third was the registry. Since May 1, 2025 every host, platform and strata hotel platform operating in B.C. must be registered, and the registration number has to be displayed on the listing next to any local business licence number. Platforms had to stop advertising unregistered listings from June 2, 2025 and cancel future bookings on them from June 23, 2025, which moved enforcement from the inspector's clipboard into the checkout flow. An unregistered Victoria listing doesn't get quietly tolerated. It stops taking money.

The penalties behind all of this moved too. Under the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Regulation (268/2023), administrative monetary penalties escalate with repetition. Failing to register an offer runs to a maximum of $5,000, then $7,500, then $10,000, while failing to confirm that a registration number is valid runs to $10,000, then $15,000, then $20,000. Alongside that, municipal ticketing maximums rose from $1,000 to $3,000 per infraction, per day, and regional district prosecution maximums from $2,000 to $50,000.

Strata hotels are the one door the Act still leaves open, though it's narrower than the phrase suggests. The Province's strata hotel registration and exemption policy guidance, updated December 1, 2025, sets out three qualifying categories.

Two of them require hotel-like operation already in place before December 8, 2023, with a staffed front desk, housekeeping and a booking website, or at least two units restricted from principal-residence use by a management agreement, zoning bylaw, First Nation law or restrictive covenant. The third covers new development after that date and demands both. The guidance is just as clear about what fails, and it names three cases: a strata lot with no unified management, a building where most units aren't temporary accommodation, and a building whose units get advertised by individual hosts.

Rules like these vary enormously once you leave the big centres, and a market three hours up the highway can look nothing like this one. The Abbotsford regulation guide, the Merritt regulation guide and the Hope regulation guide each cover a community where the local layer sits very differently on the same provincial Act.

Does Victoria Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Yes, and Victoria has been enforcing this longer than the Province has. The City stood up a short-term rental program in 2018 with a single coordinator, and by 2023 it had grown into a standalone business unit of seven, made up of two coordinators, a clerk and four bylaw officers, working through online monitoring, investigation and legal action.

The fines are set out per contravention rather than left to discretion. Schedule EE of the Bylaw Notice Adjudication Bylaw No. 16-017, consolidated to March 12, 2026, prices them like this:

Contravention	Bylaw section	Penalty
Operate without a valid licence	3(1)	$500.00
Failure to include the business licence number in advertising	5	$250.00
Failure to designate a responsible person	6(1)	$350.00
Failure to display contact for the responsible person	6(2)	$350.00
Failure to have the responsible person available to attend	6(4)	$350.00
Failure to designate a responsible person when the operator is away	6(5)	$350.00

Each carries an early-payment discount of a quarter and a late surcharge of a quarter. What section 7(2) of Bylaw 18-036 does to the arithmetic matters far more, though, since "each day that a contravention continues shall constitute a separate offence." So a $500 ticket is a daily rate, and it's the compounding rather than the headline number that hurts. Prosecution is heavier again, with section 8 setting a fine of not less than $100 and not more than $10,000 for every instance or each day it continues.

Watch out for one inconsistency in the City's own paperwork there, because the final page of the 2026 application form still prints the old range of "not less than $250 and not more than $500" and attributes it to section 8. The consolidated bylaw, amended by Bylaw 24-059 in August 2024, reads $100 to $10,000 instead, and the consolidation is the operative text. So plan around the larger figure and take no comfort from the form.

How well does any of it work? By the City's own measure, not perfectly. Comparing 990 Airbnb listings advertised as short-term in 2022 against 665 licences on issue that year, staff put the compliance rate at a maximum of 66%, and noted the true figure is lower once other platforms and peak-season listings are counted.

The same report holds a detail worth sitting with if you're planning a room-share, since single-family principal-residence operators made up 14% of licensees yet generated more than 70% of enforcement files. So the rules that get complained about are the neighbourly ones, which means noise, parking and guest behaviour rather than paperwork.

What's changed since then is that the City is no longer the only party looking. B.C.'s Compliance and Enforcement Unit runs investigations, compliance orders, administrative penalties and injunctions, and takes public tips through its own form. So between a platform that must validate your registration number, a province that can penalize you administratively, a city that tickets by the day, and a federal deduction rule keyed to local compliance, there are now four independent ways for one unlicensed Victoria listing to get expensive.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Victoria

Given how many of those checks run in parallel, the order matters, because the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for.

1. Confirm the property is your principal residence. This is where you live longer in the calendar year than anywhere else. If it isn't, stop here, since nothing later in the list fixes it.
2. Check the zoning for your address. Use VicMap or call the City's zoning desk, since Zoning Bylaw 2018 covers the downtown core, town centres, urban villages and low-density residential, while the older Zoning Regulation Bylaw covers much of the rest.
3. Decide which of the two permitted shapes you're running. Two bedrooms while you're home, or the whole home for up to 160 nights while you're away. Then count the nights honestly, because that cap runs on the calendar year and nobody resets it for you.
4. Get consents in writing, and get them last. Owner consent from every name on title, and strata council consent from an executive member who isn't you. Both expire 60 days after signature, so collect them once you're ready to file.
5. Assemble the proof of residence. Government ID with your address, a home or rental insurance policy, and a utility bill, all current and legible, with the addresses the City asks for actually visible.
6. Apply and pay the $150. Email the complete package to [email protected] or mail it in, and expect a possible inspection. An incomplete submission means reapplying rather than amending.
7. Register with the Province. Budget $100 plus the $1.50 service fee for a principal residence, and have your Parcel Identifier, SIN and date of birth ready before you start.
8. Put both numbers in every listing before it goes live, since advertising without a licence is its own $250 ticket, and platforms will pull a listing carrying no valid provincial registration.
9. Set up the operating duties on day one. Display the responsible person's name and contact inside the unit, keep them reachable within two hours, and diarize January 15 as the date your licence dies and the application starts again.

Who to Contact in Victoria about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever step you get stuck on, the answer sits with one of five offices, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of transferring.

Licensing and applications

Bylaw and Licensing Services administers the short-term rental licence, and it's the first contact for applying, correcting an application, or asking whether your space qualifies.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 250.361.0726
• Address: 1 Centennial Square, Victoria, BC V8W 1P6
• City Hall hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, on 250.385.5711

Complaints and enforcement

Community Safety and Bylaw Services handles bylaw complaints, including the ones neighbours make about your guests.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 250.361.0215
• Address: 12 Centennial Square, Victoria, BC
• Hours: weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with service requests answered seven days a week

Zoning

Whether a use is permitted at an address is a zoning question rather than a licensing one, and the City's zoning page points you at VicMap for a first look.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 250.361.0316
• Address: 1 Centennial Square, Victoria, BC V8W 1P6
• Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday

Provincial registration

Registry questions go to ServiceBC, policy questions to the Short-Term Rental Branch at the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs.

• ServiceBC: 1-833-828-2240 or [email protected], Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Short-Term Rental Branch: [email protected], PO Box 9844 Stn. Prov. Govt., Victoria, BC V8W 9T2

Provincial taxes

PST, the MRDT and marketplace facilitator questions belong to the B.C. Ministry of Finance, not to the City.

• Phone: 1-877-388-4440
• Email: [email protected]
• Address: PO Box 9442 Stn Prov Govt, Victoria, BC V8W 9V4

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Victoria on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those phone numbers get called a lot, which tells you something about the mood. I should be upfront about method here, though, since Reddit blocks automated access and its terms don't permit the commercial use a survey would need, so nothing below is a quotation from a thread. What follows is my read of how the conversation has gone since 2024, anchored where possible in the City's and the Province's own numbers rather than anecdote.

• Investors have largely stopped asking about Victoria. The model most of them want, a furnished condo let nightly with the owner living elsewhere, was 86% of the licensed market in mid-2023 and is now unavailable at any price. Conversations that stay in the region move to 30-plus-night furnished rentals instead.
• Resident hosts describe the paperwork as the hard part, not the rules. The recurring frustrations are the document specificity, the annual re-application rather than a renewal, and consents that expire after 60 days. It's a lot of administration for a two-bedroom listing.
• The 160-night cap is what people argue about most. It's generous next to a flat ban and restrictive next to a real business, and it lands awkwardly for anyone who travels for work in predictable blocks.
• Nobody credible still argues the rules go unenforced. That debate closed when platforms began validating registration numbers in June 2025, and what's left is a fairness argument rather than a risk calculation.

If you're doing that calculation now, the numbers matter more than the sentiment does. Nightly rates, occupancy and the mix of listing sizes sit on the Victoria short-term rental market page, and running a 160-night ceiling against real local ADR is the fastest way to find out whether the compliant version of this clears your costs. That's the honest test in any regulated market, mind you: work out what the rules leave you, then price that, rather than pricing the business you wish you were allowed to run.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Victoria, BC in 2026?

Yes, but only in your principal residence. Victoria permits short-term rentals as a home occupation in the home you live in, either up to two bedrooms while you're there, or the entire home for a maximum of 160 nights in a calendar year while you're temporarily away. Renting an entire unit you don't live in is no longer permitted, and the legal non-conforming status that once allowed roughly 1,600 downtown condos to operate was removed by provincial law on May 1, 2024.

How much does a Victoria short-term rental licence cost?

The City of Victoria's short-term rental business licence fee is $150 a year, set by section 3(3) of Short-Term Rental Regulation Bylaw No. 18-036. The fee is non-refundable and the licence is non-transferable. Licences run from January 16 to January 15 and must be re-applied for each calendar year with up-to-date documents, so there's no simple renewal. Provincial registration is separate and costs $100 plus a $1.50 service fee for a principal residence.

What are the fines for running an unlicensed short-term rental in Victoria?

Operating without a valid licence draws a $500 bylaw notice, advertising without a licence number draws $250, and each failure around the designated responsible person draws $350. Each day a contravention continues counts as a separate offence, so those are daily rates. Prosecution under section 8 of the bylaw carries a fine of not less than $100 and not more than $10,000 per instance or per day.

Do I need to register with the Province as well as the City of Victoria?

Yes. Since May 1, 2025 every short-term rental host in British Columbia must register with the provincial registry and display the registration number on their listing, alongside the City of Victoria business licence number. Registration costs $100 plus a $1.50 service fee where you live in the property, renewed annually. Platforms have been required to stop advertising unregistered listings since June 2, 2025 and to cancel future bookings on them since June 23, 2025.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Victoria, BC?

Three consumption taxes stack on a Victoria stay: 5% GST, 8% provincial sales tax on accommodation, and a 3% Municipal and Regional District Tax set for the City of Victoria by the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation. Online marketplace facilitators must register and collect the PST and MRDT on bookings they handle, and they collect GST where the host isn't GST-registered. Stays of 27 or more consecutive days are exempt from PST and MRDT. Rental profit is also ordinary taxable income.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.