Cancun Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Cancun and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that nobody here is trying to shut you down. Quintana Roo writes short-term hosts into its tourism law by name, taxes them in the open, and treats a rented apartment as a legitimate tourism business rather than a nuisance to be stamped out. Cancun sits inside the municipality of Benito Juárez, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and between those two governments you get something increasingly rare: a beach market that stays legally open to ordinary owners.

The catch is the paperwork, and it got noticeably heavier on 16 December 2025. Three separate registrations now stack on top of each other, and each one feeds the next: a municipal operating licence from Benito Juárez, a state tax certificate called the COFE, and a certificate from the state tourism registry. Skip any of them and it isn't only you who's exposed, because state law now forbids the booking platforms themselves from carrying a listing whose owner isn't registered.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly in 2026: which permission comes from which government, what each one costs at this year's rates, the four separate charges that attach to a night's stay, how hard the authorities push when someone ignores all of it, and who to call when a form won't validate. Every figure below comes from Quintana Roo's or Benito Juárez's own published law, checked in July 2026, and where something is still moving I've said so. Before you commit to any of it, run the property through BNBCalc first and see whether the numbers survive four layers of tax.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Cancun

That openness isn't an accident of drafting, mind you. The Ley de Turismo del Estado de Quintana Roo lists "alojadores y personas anfitrionas" as a category of tourism service provider in Article 4, defined as anyone offering lodging in a property they own, hold or manage, in whole or in part, permanently or occasionally, through a technological or digital platform.

That is a description of an Airbnb host, written into statute. Hosts sit in the same registry as hotels and dive operators, with the same duty to register and the same benefits attached.

What you won't find here is the machinery other beach cities use to squeeze the market, so there's no annual night cap, no primary-residence rule, no requirement that you live in the unit, no ceiling on how many properties one person can list, and no lottery for a fixed number of permits. Whole-home letting is normal and legal, and the Ley del Impuesto al Hospedaje taxes "departamento, casas y villas particulares, total o parcialmente" as a matter of routine in Article 4.

Zoning is where the real constraint lives, and it's the one thing worth checking before you buy anything. Benito Juárez won't issue an operating licence without a current land-use certificate or operating permit for the address, under Article 99 of the Ley de Hacienda del Municipio de Benito Juárez. Plenty of Cancun's apartment stock sits on purely residential land use, which is exactly the friction the municipality spent 2026 trying to work through.

Antonio de Jesús Riveroll Ribbon, who runs the municipal Dirección General de Protección Civil, described a coordinated push with the Tesorería, Catastro and Uso de Suelo to regularise properties already operating as lodging, including units inside residential condominiums. In those cases his department is willing to grant temporary authorisations, conditioned on the neighbours signing off and the safety protocols being met in full. So a residential-zoned condo isn't automatically a dead end. It is a conversation with your neighbours, though, rather than a form you file quietly.

The market you'd be entering is large and reasonably well counted. Quintana Roo's own Sistema de Información Turística put more than 24,900 vacation-rental properties across the state's 13 municipalities, with 6,776 of them registered in Cancun and Playa del Carmen sitting a little above 7,000. Guests in this segment stay 3.5 to 4.5 nights on average, according to the state tourism secretariat. That's a shorter average stay than most US markets, which means your cleaning and turnover costs matter more than they look on a spreadsheet.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Cancun

Assuming the land use checks out and you're able to move forward, you'll then be dealing with three governments at once, and the order genuinely matters because each permission is an input to the next. Start in the wrong place and you'll be sent back for a document you can't get yet.

First, the state taxpayer registration and the COFE. Article 7 of the Ley del Impuesto al Hospedaje requires a host to register in the Registro Estatal de Contribuyentes and obtain a Constancia de Obligaciones Fiscales Estatales for each individual property where lodging is provided. The COFE is the piece that's new. Decree 192, published on 16 December 2025, added Article 24-Quater to the Código Fiscal del Estado and retired the old state "Licencia de Funcionamiento" in the same breath. The certificate is issued per establishment or branch, even where two of them share a fiscal address. It runs until 31 December each year and is renewed during the first two months of the next one. Miss that window and you're operating without it.

Second, the tourism registry certificate. Article 52 Quater of the Ley de Turismo makes inscription in the Registro Estatal de Turismo, known as RETUR-Q, annual, free and obligatory, with the year's Convocatoria published in the state gazette each January and a 60-day window to register or renew from that date. The sequence matters because Article 52 Septies now asks for the COFE and the state taxpayer registration as its supporting documents, a change made by the same December 2025 reform. No COFE, no tourism certificate. Providers and platforms both have to hold a current certificate before they can offer anything, and hosts register through SEDETUR's own RETUR-Q portal.

Third, the municipal operating licence. Under Article 98 BIS of the Ley de Hacienda, anyone letting houses, apartments (whole, or by private or shared room), motorhomes or campsites through a platform has 30 working days from the moment they start earning to apply to the Padrón Municipal de Contribuyentes. Article 99 then covers the licencia de funcionamiento itself, one per establishment, showing the authorised business activity. It carries an annual declarative refrendo due by 15 March, and the municipality opened the 2026 round on 7 January through its Cancún Digital portal. The licence has to be displayed somewhere visible in the property, and it can be revoked at any time if you operate a different activity than the one authorised or let any requirement lapse.

So what does the whole set cost? Less than most people expect, though the amounts drift every year, because municipal charges run off the daily Unidad de Medida y Actualización and INEGI set that at $117.31 MXN for 2026. The peso figures move even when the law doesn't.

Charge	What it is	2026 cost
Licencia de funcionamiento	Municipal operating licence, short-term lodging category	1.6 to 5.5 UMA ($187.70 to $645.21)
Protección Civil dictamen aprobatorio	Safety sign-off for low-risk commercial premises	13.25 UMA ($1,554.36)
Protección Civil registration	Registration with the municipal civil protection authority	5.30 UMA ($621.74)
Permiso Ambiental de Operación	Environmental operating permit, platform-advertised lodging	28.93 UMA ($3,393.78)
RETUR-Q certificate	State tourism registry inscription	Free

Two of those deserve a second look, as of July 2026. The environmental operating permit at 28.93 UMA is a per-property annual cost that most first-time hosts never budget for, and it went up in the December 2025 municipal reform.

The Protección Civil dictamen stopped being a formality this year. Every property let as a vacation rental in Benito Juárez now needs the civil protection sign-off, a written contingency plan, and a minimum safety kit:

• Working fire extinguishers
• A first-aid box matched to who's staying
• Emergency numbers posted where a guest will see them
• Defined evacuation routes
• Clear signage, correctly installed

Make sure you buy and install all of that before the inspection rather than after, because the dictamen is a prerequisite for the operating licence and the licence is a prerequisite for everything else.

Required Documents for Cancun Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those fees come back if an application is rejected, it's worth getting the file right before you submit anything. Article 98 BIS spells out what Benito Juárez wants for the municipal taxpayer registration, and the list is short but unforgiving on one point in particular.

• The municipal form, completed, in original and copy.
• Your SAT paperwork, specifically the registration notice, branch-opening notice or change-of-tax-status notice from the federal tax authority.
• Identification. An official photo ID for an individual, or the incorporation deed plus the legal representative's ID for a company, with proof of the representative's powers.
• Proof you can legally use the property. Title if you own it, or a lease, agreement or other document if you don't, with copies of the IDs of everyone who signed.
• Proof the property is current on impuesto predial. This is the one that trips people up, and it isn't negotiable: the property tax has to be paid up before the municipality will process anything, and Article 99 confirms the licence and its annual renewal both depend on it.

The licence application under Article 99 then layers on the operational documents: a current land-use certificate or operating permit, the Protección Civil dictamen, the Permiso Ambiental de Operación where it applies, and a no-debt certificate for the federal maritime-terrestrial zone if your property touches it. That last one only bites on beachfront, but on beachfront it bites hard.

For the tourism registry, SEDETUR's own RETUR-Q guidance sets out the practical mechanics. Registration is by establishment rather than by company, so three apartments means three certificates, each with its own address and each with a named contact person who receives the notifications. Documents upload as PDFs under 1 MB. Once approved, you download the certificate, print it and keep it visible in the property.

Do check that the commercial activity you pick at the start matches what your state registration says, because SEDETUR's system won't let you change it later without deleting the registration and starting over. Keep in mind that this particular document dates from 2022 and still calls the state certificate a Licencia de Funcionamiento. The form now asks for the COFE instead, even though the process behind it hasn't changed.

Cancun Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all of that and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and four separate charges can attach to a single night in Cancun. Two are federal, one is state, one is municipal, and each has a different collector and a different deadline.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Impuesto al Hospedaje (ISH)	6% of the lodging price	SATQ, withheld by the platform
IVA	16%, half withheld by the platform (all of it without an RFC)	SAT, federal
ISR withholding on your income	4% of gross lodging income	SAT, federal, withheld by the platform
Derecho de Saneamiento Ambiental	$85.40 MXN per night	Tesorería Municipal de Benito Juárez

The lodging tax is the headline number and the one people get wrong. Article 8 of the Ley del Impuesto al Hospedaje sets a general rate of 5%, then adds a second paragraph putting the rate at 6% for exactly the category a short-term rental falls into: houses, apartments and private villas let in whole or in part, whoever collects the money.

So the rate that applies to a Cancun hotel room is not the rate that applies to your apartment. Payments are monthly and definitive, due by the 10th of the following month, and the return is still due in a month when you earned nothing at all.

In practice the platform handles it. Article 4 requires an intermediary that collects payment through a platform to withhold and remit the tax, and since the December 2025 reform it must also issue you a retention certificate within five days of the payment, on the official format SATQ authorises.

Airbnb has been doing this in Quintana Roo for years. Its own newsroom reports that from 2017 to the close of 2024 it withheld and paid more than 1,000 million pesos in lodging tax to the state finance secretariat on hosts' behalf. Where a booking comes to you directly rather than through a platform, though, the withholding and the payment both fall back on you.

The federal layer is two taxes with one collector. Article 113-A of the Ley del Impuesto sobre la Renta makes the platform withhold 4% of your gross lodging income as a provisional income-tax payment, a rate that sits above the 2.1% for ride-hailing and well above the general services rate. If your total annual income stays under $300,000 MXN and you receive part of the payment directly, the same article lets you elect to treat those withholdings as definitive, which spares you a lot of filing.

On VAT, don't assume the residential-rental exemption saves you. Article 20 of the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado states plainly that the exemption does not reach premises supplied furnished or used as hotels or lodging houses, which describes every short-term rental ever listed. Article 18-J then has the platform withhold half of the 16% VAT it collects, rising to the full amount where you haven't given it your RFC. Remember that the penalty for not handing over your tax ID is arithmetical rather than administrative. You lose eight percentage points of revenue, quietly, every month.

The municipal charge is the one visitors never see coming, and it's unusual enough to be worth spelling out. Articles 147 to 149 of the Ley de Hacienda create a Derecho de Saneamiento Ambiental, an environmental sanitation fee, and the December 2025 reform raised it to 72.80% of the daily UMA per night or occupancy event. That works out at $85.40 MXN a night in 2026, up from 70% of the UMA in the previous text.

It covers whole houses, whole apartments and private or shared rooms, however the stay was contracted, and the law names platform bookings explicitly. Technically the guest owes it and you withhold it, while Article 148 makes the platform jointly liable when it fails to reach the municipality. You file a monthly informative declaration of occupied rooms and pay by the 17th of the following month, and that declaration is due even in a month with nothing to remit.

On a $1,500 peso nightly rate the fee is under 6% of revenue. On a cheap studio in a shoulder month, it stings.

Add it up and a Cancun guest is paying roughly 22 cents in tax on every peso of room rate, before the nightly environmental fee. That's high by Mexican standards and it's worth modelling properly rather than assuming a US-style tax load. BNBCalc Markets is useful here for comparing what the same capital would clear in markets where the stack is thinner.

Quintana Roo Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

All of that municipal detail sits on top of a state framework that does most of the heavy lifting, and it's the state layer that changed in December 2025. On the 16th of that month Quintana Roo published four decrees at once, reforming the lodging tax law, the payroll tax law, the state fiscal code and the state finance law, all effective the day they appeared.

Chevez Ruiz Zamarripa's January 2026 bulletin on the reforms called the creation of the COFE the headline change. Reading the statutes themselves, that's right.

The COFE regime is stricter than the licence it replaced. Article 24-Quater lets SATQ make verification visits to confirm the information behind an application, and separate physical visits to confirm the declared fiscal address exists and that you can be found there. Update notices then carry deadlines of their own:

• Change of fiscal address: within a month
• Change of business activity: within a month
• Increase or decrease in your tax obligations: within five working days
• Opening, resuming or closing an establishment: within a month

Suspension of a COFE runs 15 to 90 days. Article 210 goes further, stating that revocation "es razón suficiente para que se ordene la clausura definitiva e inmediata del establecimiento", which is to say the property gets shut, permanently and immediately.

Platforms carry real duties here too, and this is the part that changes the calculation for anyone thinking of skipping the paperwork. A platform that intermediates lodging payments has to register in the state taxpayer registry, hold its own COFE as a withholding agent, name a legal representative and give an address inside Quintana Roo for notifications. Each March, SATQ publishes the list of platforms holding a current COFE in the state gazette and on its website.

Every platform must also hand SATQ its Padrón de Anfitriones, the full roster of its hosts. Article 7 spells out what that roster carries: each host's name and nationality, tax ID, proof of the address where lodging is provided, phone numbers, email addresses and verified social accounts, the platform they advertise through, the date the property opened, and the host's COFE. So the state doesn't have to find you. Your platform tells it who you are.

The tourism law closes the circle. Article 55 obliges every provider to hold a current RETUR-Q certificate, and then, in the very next fracción, forbids digital platforms from offering, administering, providing or contracting tourism services in the state on behalf of providers who don't. Failing to register or renew inside the 60-day window draws a fine of 50 to 965 times the daily UMA under Article 52 Nonies, which at 2026 rates is $5,865.50 to $113,204.15 MXN.

One point of scope, because the state rules travel and the municipal ones don't. Everything in this section applies across Quintana Roo, so Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Isla Mujeres, Puerto Morelos and Cozumel hosts face the same COFE, the same tourism registry and the same 6% lodging tax. What differs is the municipal layer, since each municipality writes its own Ley de Hacienda with its own licence fees and its own environmental charge.

Be aware, then, that a Tulum property and a Cancun property do not carry identical costs even though identical state law sits over both.

Does Cancun Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Both of those municipalities enforce, and yes, Cancun is serious about it. The enforcement here looks nothing like the complaint-and-inspector model most US hosts picture, though. Quintana Roo works through the tax system instead, and the tax system has teeth that a zoning code doesn't.

Follow the money and the seriousness becomes obvious. The state budgeted $3,643,330,582 MXN from the lodging tax alone in its Ley de Ingresos for 2026, which makes it the single largest own-source tax the state collects, ahead of payroll tax. Benito Juárez, for its part, budgeted $899,353,855 MXN from environmental and sanitation services in its own 2026 revenue law, the line the nightly saneamiento ambiental charge feeds, plus $92,717,401 from operating licences and renewals. Governments protect revenue at that scale.

The sanctions themselves are graded, and they escalate to closure. Articles 69 and 70 of the Código Fiscal del Estado set three bands. Registering late, or failing to obtain the required permits and certificates inside the deadline, draws 10 to 25 UMA ($1,173.10 to $2,932.75). Not obtaining the COFE at all draws 25 to 50 UMA ($2,932.75 to $5,865.50), under a fracción added in December 2025. Altering or falsifying the documents behind an application draws 300 to 700 UMA.

Closure of the premises can then be ordered on top of the fine.

The municipal route runs in parallel. Article 103 of the Ley de Hacienda sends non-registrants a formal requirement under the Código Fiscal Municipal, and an operating licence can be revoked at any time for running an activity other than the one authorised.

What makes it bite, though, is the joint liability. Platforms are solidarily responsible for your unpaid municipal fees under Article 98 BIS, jointly liable for the environmental charge under Article 148, and legally barred from carrying an unregistered provider under the tourism law.

That third duty is the one that hurts, because it turns a compliance problem into a distribution problem. I could not confirm from Airbnb's or Booking.com's own help pages whether either is currently blocking Quintana Roo listings that lack a RETUR-Q number, so treat the operational reality as less settled than the legal duty, which is unambiguous.

Safety enforcement is the newest front, and it's aimed squarely at this segment. Protección Civil's 2026 programme covers documentary review plus training days in first aid, evacuation and extinguisher use for hosts and their staff. "No se trata de multar, sino de generar una verdadera cultura de la prevención," Riveroll told Luces del Siglo in February 2026. "La seguridad no puede ser opcional."

Read that as a grace period rather than a permanent posture. A department that spends a year training people is usually building the record it will later enforce against.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Cancun

Given how much of the enforcement runs through documents rather than inspectors, the order you tackle those documents in is what decides whether this takes six weeks or six months. Work through the list below in sequence, because the early steps are the ones that can kill the later ones.

1. Check the land use before anything else. Ask the municipality what the address is zoned for and whether it can carry an operating permit for lodging. A purely residential condo isn't fatal, though it does mean a temporary Protección Civil authorisation and the neighbours' agreement, so find that out before you buy or renovate.
2. Clear the impuesto predial. The municipality checks it against its own records for the taxpayer registration, the licence and the annual renewal. Nothing moves while it's in arrears.
3. Sort out your federal tax position. You'll need an RFC and a current constancia de situación fiscal from SAT, both because the state and municipal applications ask for them and because handing your RFC to the platform halves the VAT withholding.
4. Register with the state and get your COFE. One per property, through SATQ, valid to 31 December and renewable in January or February. Everything downstream asks for this number.
5. Get the Protección Civil dictamen. Book the inspection, install the extinguishers, first-aid box, signage and posted emergency numbers first, and have your contingency plan written.
6. Apply for the municipal licence within 30 working days of your first income. Padrón registration and licencia de funcionamiento go through Cancún Digital, with the land-use certificate, the civil protection dictamen and the environmental permit attached. Then diarise the 15 March refrendo.
7. Register with RETUR-Q. Free, annual, per property, through SEDETUR's portal, with your COFE and state registration as supporting documents. Watch out for the 60-day window that opens when the Convocatoria is published each January.
8. Set up the monthly filings before your first guest. Lodging tax by the 10th, environmental sanitation declaration and payment by the 17th, and both are due even in months with no bookings.
9. Put the certificates where they belong. Operating licence visible in the property, RETUR-Q certificate printed and displayed, and your registration number on the listing itself.

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

Working through those nine steps means dealing with three different authorities, and knowing which one owns your question is the difference between a phone call and a wasted morning.

State tax, the COFE and the lodging tax

The Servicio de Administración Tributaria de Quintana Roo (SATQ) handles the state taxpayer registry, the COFE and lodging tax filings.

• Cancun office: Dirección de Recaudación, Av. Tulum SM. 2 Norte 22 y 23 S/N, Col. Centro, Cancún
• Phone: (998) 887 14 48
• Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Taxpayer assistance: [email protected], WhatsApp (983) 107 62 78 or (983) 157 35 64, Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

One note on sourcing here, because it matters. SATQ's own website times out from outside Mexico fairly often, so the office details above come from its published office directory as captured in February 2026, while the assistance channels come from SEDETUR's own RETUR-Q guidance. Ring ahead before travelling to an office.

The tourism registry

The Secretaría de Turismo del Estado de Quintana Roo (SEDETUR) operates RETUR-Q and issues the inscription certificate.

• Cancun office: Smza. 17, Mza. 3, Lote 5, Av. Nizuc casi esquina con Av. Nichupté, C.P. 77500
• Cancun phone: +52 (998) 881 9000
• Chetumal head office: Centro de Convenciones Anexo A, Boulevard Bahía esq. Ignacio Comonfort, Col. 5 de Abril, C.P. 77018, +52 (983) 835 0860
• Registry support: [email protected], WhatsApp 983 190 3693
• Online: the RETUR-Q portal and the state tourism information system

The municipal licence, land use and civil protection

The Ayuntamiento de Benito Juárez issues the operating licence, the land-use certificate and the civil protection sign-off, and it runs the environmental sanitation charge.

• Address: Palacio Municipal, Av. Tulum No. 5, Sm. 5, C.P. 77500, Cancún
• Switchboard: (998) 881-28-00
• Extensions: 6713, 6715 and 6719 for Ingresos (licences and the padrón), 3003 for Desarrollo Urbano (land use), 7600 for Protección Civil
• Online: licence applications and renewals run through the Cancún Digital portal linked from cancun.gob.mx

Protección Civil's own offices moved to Supermanzana 256 on Av. Yaxché in Fraccionamiento Prado Norte, with a citizen module at Plaza Centro local 224, Sm. 5, on Av. Nader, both open Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. That relocation notice dates from July 2023, which is the most recent official confirmation I could open, so call the switchboard before you drive out there.

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

Those switchboards get used a lot, judging by how much of the public conversation about Cancun hosting turns out to be a conversation about paperwork. I should be straight about the limits of this section, though. Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read its Cancun host threads for this refresh and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What follows is my read of the visible discourse rather than a survey, so do weigh it accordingly.

• Nobody argues about legality. They argue about sequencing. The compliance question that dominates is which registration comes first, and that's a fair thing to be confused about, because the answer changed in December 2025 and most of the guidance written before then is now wrong about the state certificate's name and its role. A guide that tells you to get a "Licencia de Funcionamiento Estatal" is describing a document that no longer exists under that name.
• The consultancy market tells you where the pain is. Cancun and Playa del Carmen have a visible cottage industry of accountants and property managers selling RETUR-Q and COFE registration as a service. Firms don't build that unless owners are finding the process hard enough to pay someone else to do it.
• Land use is the recurring wall. The complaint that keeps surfacing is from owners of apartments in residential-zoned condominiums who discover the land-use certificate requirement after buying, not before. The municipality's willingness to grant conditional authorisations is genuinely new in 2026 and hasn't filtered into most of the advice being passed around.
• The tax load surprises people who modelled US-style numbers. The 6% lodging tax, the 16% VAT and the nightly environmental charge together are a bigger bite than most new entrants price in, and the environmental fee in particular is invisible until the first monthly declaration.

Take that last point seriously before you commit capital. Cancun is a legal, open, well-run market, which is exactly why the margin lives in the modelling rather than in the regulation. Get the four tax layers into your projection at their real rates, add the annual licence and permit renewals, then run the property through BNBCalc and see whether it still clears your hurdle. If it does, the paperwork ahead of you is tedious rather than dangerous, and that's a far better problem to have than a ban.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Cancun in 2026?

Yes. Cancun, in the municipality of Benito Juárez, allows short-term rentals with no night cap, no primary-residence rule and no limit on how many properties one owner can list. Quintana Roo's tourism law names platform hosts as tourism service providers. You need three permissions first: a municipal operating licence from Benito Juárez, a state tax certificate called the COFE, and a certificate from the state tourism registry, RETUR-Q. The property also needs land use that permits lodging.

What is the COFE and when did Cancun hosts start needing one?

The Constancia de Obligaciones Fiscales Estatales is Quintana Roo's state tax certificate, created by a decree published on 16 December 2025 that replaced the former state operating licence. Hosts need one for each property where they provide lodging, obtained through the Servicio de Administración Tributaria de Quintana Roo. It stays valid until 31 December each year and must be renewed in the first two months of the next year. Revocation of a COFE is grounds for immediate permanent closure of the property.

How much tax does a short-term rental in Cancun pay?

Four charges apply. Quintana Roo's lodging tax is 6% of the room price for houses, apartments and villas, higher than the 5% general rate. Federal VAT is 16%, of which the booking platform withholds half, or all of it if you haven't given the platform your Mexican tax ID. The platform also withholds 4% of your gross lodging income as provisional income tax. Benito Juárez adds an environmental sanitation charge of $85.40 MXN per night in 2026.

Does Airbnb collect Cancun's lodging tax automatically?

Yes for the state lodging tax. Quintana Roo law requires a platform that collects payment to withhold and remit the 6% lodging tax and issue the host a retention certificate within five days. Airbnb reports remitting more than 1,000 million pesos in lodging tax to Quintana Roo between 2017 and the end of 2024. Bookings taken directly, outside a platform, leave the withholding and monthly filing with the host instead.

What happens if you rent your Cancun property without registering?

Fines start at 10 to 25 times the daily UMA, roughly $1,173 to $2,933 pesos in 2026, for failing to register or obtain permits on time, and 25 to 50 UMA for not obtaining the COFE. Falsifying documents draws 300 to 700 UMA. Missing the tourism registry deadline carries a separate fine of 50 to 965 UMA, up to about $113,204 pesos. Closure of the property can be ordered on top, and platforms are legally barred from carrying unregistered hosts.

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