Pinellas County, Florida Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Pinellas County, Florida and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, and Florida law is the reason: the state won't let a county ban vacation rentals outright, so Pinellas never tried. What the county built instead, during 2025, was a licensing program on top of that permission. So the honest answer in 2026 is yes, with a Certificate of Use, a passed inspection, and about $600 out the door before your first guest arrives.

There's a second catch, though, and it decides whether any of the county rules touch you at all. Pinellas County's short-term rental program covers unincorporated Pinellas only, which is roughly 280,000 residents outside city limits and about 2,200 short-term rentals by the county's own count. Own a condo in Clearwater or a bungalow in St. Petersburg and the county certificate isn't your problem, because your city's ordinance is, and some of the beach cities are far tougher.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly on the Gulf coast in 2026: which addresses the county rules reach, what the certificate costs, how the inspection works, the three layers of tax on every night you sell, how hard Pinellas pushes, and who to call when you get stuck. Everything below comes from the county's own ordinances and pages, the Tax Collector and Florida statute, checked in July 2026, and where I couldn't pin something down I've said so. Before you spend a dollar, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Pinellas County, Florida?

Two layers of law stack here, and separating them makes the rest much easier to reason about.

Underneath sits Florida statute, which sets the outer boundary of what any local government in this state can do. Fla. Stat. § 509.032(7)(b) says a local law "may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals," though ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011 survive, and the cities that had them can still enforce them.

The county's own ordinance walks that history in its recitals, then says plainly that "these regulations do not regulate duration or frequency of short term rentals." So Pinellas drafted around the statute rather than testing it.

The top layer is the county's, and it arrived in two moves during 2025. First came Ordinance 25-9, adopted March 25, 2025, which rewrote § 138-3232 of the Land Development Code and created the Certificate of Use. Then the Board adopted Ordinance 25-15 on August 5, 2025, moving the substance into the Housing Code as a new Division 5, § 22-319, and filed it with the state on August 8, 2025, which is the date it took effect. Both sections are still on the books, mind you, though § 22-319(e) settles the tie: where the zoning version and the housing-code version conflict, Division 5 governs.

You're inside the program, under § 22-319(b), once a unit gets rented "more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 days," or once it's advertised as a place regularly rented to guests. Houses, duplexes, condos and granny flats all count, while hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts sit outside it, and so does anything let for more than a month at a time.

One exemption matters to a lot of people, though it's narrower than it sounds. Renting a single bedroom inside the home you live in needs no Certificate of Use, so long as your listing makes clear that guests are renting part of the house. A guest house or garage apartment gets no such break, since the county treats it as a rental in its own right and wants a separate certificate, even with you living in the main house twenty feet away.

Then there's the boundary question, which trips up more buyers than any occupancy rule. Section 22-319(d) limits the county's reach to "all lands within the unincorporated area of Pinellas County," and the county says the same at the top of its short-term rental page: check with your municipality for its own rules. Since 24 cities sit inside this county and some of their ordinances predate June 1, 2011, being a few hundred feet on the wrong side of a line can mean a flat no rather than a $450 fee.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Pinellas County

So the first job isn't paperwork at all, it's finding out which government you answer to. Pinellas County runs an address lookup at My Neighborhood that tells you whether a property sits in unincorporated county or inside a municipality. Do check that before you make an offer rather than after, because the answer changes which rulebook applies and, in a few beach cities, whether there's a business at all. I didn't verify each city's position for this guide, so treat everything below as the unincorporated answer.

Assuming your address does land in unincorporated Pinellas, three approvals stack up before you can take a booking, and the order matters. Florida wants a state vacation rental license from the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants under Fla. Stat. § 509.241, the Tax Collector wants you registered for tourist development tax, and the county wants proof of that state license attached to your certificate application, since the application instructions ask for a number beginning with DWE or CND. Get the state license first and the county step goes smoothly, whereas doing it backwards leaves you on a stalled application.

Some properties never qualify no matter how the paperwork is done, and the county names them on its short-term rental page: sheds without utilities, campers and recreational vehicles, tents, and shipping containers never converted and permitted as habitable structures.

For everything that does qualify, though, the number driving your revenue model is maximum occupancy, and it isn't the number of beds you can fit. That's because § 22-319(h)(2) caps a unit at two people per bedroom plus two more in one common area, never more than ten in total, with guests of every age counting.

Parking then applies a second ceiling: one off-street space for every three occupants, rounded up, each space big enough for a standard car eight feet wide by eighteen feet long. Garage spaces count when guests can use them, though front lawn parking doesn't count at all. And when the two tests disagree, the county's own FAQ says which wins: "Maximum occupancy depends on bedroom size and available parking... If either standard is not met, your occupancy will be reduced." The lower ceiling is the one you get.

Which brings up the definition that quietly decides more Pinellas deals than anything else here. A bedroom under § 22-319(f) needs 70 square feet of conditioned space in a site-built home (50 in a manufactured home), a spot along an exterior wall, a closet plus a door or somewhere a door could reasonably go, and an emergency escape opening to the outside. A room you walk through to reach another doesn't qualify unless that other room is a bathroom or closet, and the ordinance rules out the den, the sunroom, the media room and the bonus room by name. So the four-bedroom you bought may be a three-bedroom in the county's eyes. Your cap drops with it.

Older Gulf-coast housing stock is where that bites hardest. The county's inspection requirements apply the building code in force when the house went up, but only back to a point. Anything older gets the modern rule instead, because "homes built earlier than 1973 will be required to have a compliant egress in each bedroom in accordance with the current Florida Building Code." That means a net clear opening of 5.7 square feet, at least 20 inches wide and 24 inches high, with the sill no more than 44 inches up. Be aware that those dimensions don't multiply the way people expect, because the county's inspection visual guide, updated in March 2026, warns that a 20 by 24 inch window does not equal 5.7 square feet. On a 1950s cottage, that's a window replacement per bedroom before you ever pass.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Pinellas County

Assuming your bedrooms survive that definition and your parking holds up, there's still the certificate to get. Applications run through the Pinellas County Access Portal under the Code Enforce tab, and the account has to belong to the property owner. The county's published fee schedule runs to a $450 Certificate of Use fee split into two payments in the first year, a $150 initial inspection, $100 for a re-inspection if you fail, $450 to renew each year, and $100 for the re-inspection every two years. And none of that comes back, so make sure the property can pass before you pay to find out.

The sequence runs like this. You pay the application fee at submission, staff review the documents, and only after approval does an email arrive asking for the inspection fee, at which point someone calls to schedule the visit. Should the county find the application incomplete, § 22-319(g)(2) gives you 20 business days to cure it, and anything that misses that window is deemed withdrawn rather than held open.

Inspectors are checking life safety rather than design. Smoke alarms have to sit in every sleeping room, outside each sleeping area and on every story, with carbon monoxide alarms within ten feet of each sleeping room wherever there's a fossil-fuel appliance, a fireplace or an attached garage. Bedrooms get measured against the definition above, the unit against the dwelling-space minimums in § 22-300, and any pool against the Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act in chapter 515. Fail, and you get a printed correction notice left at the property, then 30 days to fix it and get re-inspected, though owners who can show real effort, such as a permit already in review, can ask for 60 more days.

Once issued, the certificate is good for one year, and then renewal carries an early deadline that catches people out. Section 22-319(g)(4) wants the renewal filed 60 days before expiry, and it rewards you for being on time, because a timely filing keeps the existing certificate alive until the county rules on the new one, while a late one means the certificate expires and the unit can't be rented. Keep in mind that it's non-transferable too: a buyer has 30 days from closing to apply for their own, or the old certificate goes null and void on day 30, fresh inspection included.

Two obligations sit alongside the certificate and are easy to miss because they don't feel like licensing. The first is that every advertisement has to carry your state license number, your county certificate number, the occupancy limit, the maximum parking, and the county's good-neighbor statement, and an ad missing any of that is a violation under § 22-319(i). The second is quieter and costlier to get wrong, since § 22-319(g)(15) makes the owner notify the Pinellas County Property Appraiser of the intent to rent short term. Renting a homesteaded property to tourists without telling that office is a separate problem from anything Code Enforcement does to you.

Then there's the responsible party, which is a role rather than a box to tick. Every short-term rental gets exactly one, designated on a notarized county form, and § 22-319(h)(5) says they have to be reachable at the posted number within 24 hours and willing to come to the property when an occupant, a neighbor or a county official calls. They also have to ask, in writing inside the reservation process, whether any guest is a sexual offender or predator as defined in Fla. Stat. §§ 775.21, 943.0435, 944.607 or 985.4815, then tell the Sheriff's Department immediately if the answer is yes. Naming a property manager doesn't move the liability off the owner, since whoever accepts the designation takes on the same penalties.

Speaking of which, the penalty ladder has two rungs and most write-ups only mention the first. Section 1-8 of the county code caps a conviction at a $500 fine. It then adds the sentence that matters: "with respect to violations of this Code that are continuous with respect to time, each day the violation continues is a separate offense."

The heavier rung is civil. Under § 2-625 a special magistrate can impose up to $1,000 per day for a first violation and $5,000 per day for a repeat, up to $15,000 where the violation is found irreparable, and record the order as a lien. That lien reaches past the offending house to any other real or personal property you own in Pinellas County. It also sits ahead of your mortgage.

Required Documents for Pinellas County Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those fees come back and the fines run daily, it pays to assemble the file once and assemble it properly. The county lists the required uploads in its FAQ, and the list is short enough that people underestimate it, then lose three weeks to a resubmission.

• A parking plan, showing the number and location of your on-site spaces, with a drawing where one helps. Remember that each marked space has to fit a car eight feet by eighteen feet, and that this drawing sets your occupancy ceiling.
• Proof of ownership, meaning the recorded deed or a recent Property Appraiser profile. A tax bill is explicitly not accepted, and it's the substitution the county sends back most often.
• Your active DBPR vacation rental license, the one whose number starts with DWE or CND. The county's FAQ is blunt about how the two relate: "A state license does not replace the County's Certificate of Use requirement."
• Verification of active status from the Florida Division of Corporations, where an entity owns the property rather than a person.
• An owner affidavit, or an agent affidavit, depending on whether you or a designee is the responsible party. Both are notarized, so build a trip to a notary into your timeline.

The form itself then asks for the owner's and the responsible party's name, address, phone and email, the property address including any unit letter, the name you market the place under, the parcel identification number, the property type, and the number of bedrooms. Every one of those is checkable against the county's own records, which is worth knowing before you round anything up.

Two more forms on that page are worth bookmarking on day one: the change of contact information form, and the ceasing rental form. Until the county processes that second one, it still counts the property as an active short-term rental, so the renewal clock keeps running on a place you no longer rent.

Pinellas County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and three charges land on every night you sell. Two go to Tallahassee and one to a county office in Clearwater, so the returns don't line up.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Florida sales tax on transient rentals	6%	Florida Department of Revenue
Pinellas discretionary sales surtax	1%	Florida Department of Revenue
Pinellas tourist development tax	6%	Pinellas County Tax Collector
Total on a short stay	13%	the state and the county

The state pieces come first. Florida taxes rentals of six months or less at the general 6% sales tax rate, and Pinellas adds a 1% discretionary surtax on top. The Department of Revenue's own DR-15DSS surtax table confirms that 1% for calendar year 2026, running since February 1, 1990 and set to expire December 31, 2029. Those returns fall due on the 1st and go late after the 20th of the following month, and booking platforms have had to register and collect it since July 1, 2021.

The county piece is the tourist development tax, levied at six percent by § 118-31 of the Pinellas County Code on anyone renting living quarters for six months or less. Note the wording, because that section levies it "throughout the county," so unlike the Certificate of Use, this 6% applies inside the cities as well. The county collects it itself, which the Department of Revenue's DR-15TDT rate table confirms. The Tax Collector's FAQ then does the arithmetic: "there is also 7% sales and use tax collected by the Florida Department of Revenue, totaling 13% tax."

Registering for that account is its own step, and the Tourist Development Tax page is where it starts. Returns run monthly, or quarterly for small operators, though the Tax Collector's published quarterly threshold is $300 while § 118-31(d) says $500, so confirm which applies before you pick a frequency. A zero return is still required in a month with no bookings, and missing one draws a flat 10% penalty or a $50 minimum, whichever is greater, plus floating daily interest with no cap. File on time and pay online, though, and you keep 2.5% of the tax as a collection allowance, capped at $30.

Platform collection is the part hosts most often get wrong, in both directions. Airbnb has been collecting and paying over the Pinellas tourist development tax since December 1, 2015, and HomeAway and VRBO since October 1, 2018, along with HouseTrip, VacationHomeRentals, VacationRentals and Misterb&b. That doesn't retire your account, mind you, because the Tax Collector warns that "if the agent fails to collect and pay the tax, the owner will be held liable," and separately that "you cannot give the taxes you collected to a third party."

So direct bookings, your own website and a repeat guest paying you by transfer are all yours to collect and hand over. Watch out for the guest who stays past six months too, since a bona fide written lease over six months is exempt, and a guest without a lease who has paid tax for six months goes exempt in the seventh. These platform deals are struck county by county across Florida, and our Collier County guide covers a market where they landed differently.

Deductions and Write-Offs

Florida has no personal income tax, so none of this stack shows up on a state return. The write-offs happen federally instead, where the usual expenses follow: the certificate and inspection fees, the DBPR license, cleaning, utilities, insurance, platform commissions, mortgage interest, property tax and depreciation. Keep the receipts for the egress windows and the alarms too, because compliance work you do to pass inspection is a deductible cost of operating. One wrinkle is worth flagging, though: the Tax Collector wants your records kept three years and available for audit inside Pinellas County, so out-of-state owners should keep the books somewhere they can produce them.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

None of that tax stack is unique to Pinellas, and neither is the license sitting underneath the county certificate, because Florida runs a real statewide layer that explains both why the county could regulate at all and why it stopped where it did.

The license is the piece with the most teeth, because Fla. Stat. § 509.242 classifies a vacation rental as a transient public lodging establishment, and § 509.241 then requires every one to hold a license from the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants, renewed annually. There are two classes, Vacation Rental Condo and Vacation Rental Dwelling, and the division's fee schedule puts a new single-unit license at a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year, with a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee on top. Pinellas sits in District 3, run out of Tampa, and those licenses expire on February 1 every year, so your renewal date has nothing to do with when you applied.

The test for which stays need that license changed recently, and it's easy to miss because it reads like a technicality. Chapter 2025-113, signed as SB 606 and effective July 1, 2025, rewrote the transient occupancy test. A rental now counts as transient when it's let "more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days." Those are consecutive days, not calendar months, and a stay is presumed temporary unless a written lease says otherwise. Pinellas wrote that same test into § 22-319(b), so the county and state thresholds match instead of making two tripwires.

So what may a Florida county still do to you? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Section 509.032(7)(b) blocks a ban and blocks any rule about how often or how long you may rent, then leaves everything else alone: zoning, life safety, building code, noise, parking, and licensing that doesn't work as a ban. Pinellas built its program inside that gap. The one real escape hatch belongs to cities rather than counties, since ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011 are grandfathered.

As for what's coming, the honest answer as of July 2026 is not much. The 2024 attempt to expand preemption and add statewide registration, SB 280, was vetoed on June 27, 2024, hasn't been revived, and a 2026 pair of water-safety bills for rentals near pools, SB 658 and its House companion, both died on March 13, 2026. So plan around the law as it stands rather than around a bill. Our Florida statewide guide maps how differently this plays out county by county, and the Manatee County guide and Sarasota County guide cover the next two counties down the same coast.

Does Pinellas County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Since Tallahassee isn't about to rescue anyone from the county's program, the question that still matters is how hard Pinellas pushes, and the design answers a fair bit of it. Enforcement runs through the Code Enforcement Division rather than the courts, and the county built the reporting channels before the caseload: a 24-hour hotline on (727) 353-2436, an online complaint portal, and instructions telling neighbors to call the Sheriff's Office on (727) 582-6200 and the hotline for noise. Commission Chair Brian Scott framed the program in the county's announcement as bringing "greater accountability... compliance with minimum life safety standards, providing for increased code enforcement staff, and a mechanism for data collection."

The advertising rule is what makes all of that workable, and it's the piece to take seriously. Because § 22-319(i) requires your certificate number and your state license number in every listing, a compliant rental is identifiable from a phone in fifteen seconds, and so is a non-compliant one. A neighbor doesn't need to prove anything about your guests. The missing number in your listing header is the complaint.

Timing has moved on as well, which is what most older guidance gets wrong about Pinellas. Applications opened on March 31, 2025 with staggered deadlines of May 31, June 30 or July 31, 2025 depending on zip code. Those windows shut a year ago. An operator running an uncertified rental here in 2026 isn't early any more, and because § 1-8 and § 2-625 both accrue daily, the exposure grows every day the listing stays up rather than arriving as one bill.

There is a first-offense cushion in the code, and it's worth knowing about because it's finite. Under § 2-622(b), a true first-time violator gets one chance to correct, granted once by that department and never again. After that the definition of a repeat violation in § 2-619 is wider than most people assume: the same provision within 365 days counts, "notwithstanding the violations occur at different locations." So an owner cited in one house who then trips the same rule in another is a repeat violator at $5,000 a day.

What I couldn't find is the scoreboard. Pinellas hasn't published a count of certificates issued, applications denied, or citations written since the program began, and I'm not going to estimate one. So treat the enforcement picture as structurally serious rather than statistically proven, and read the code as what the county has given itself permission to do.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Pinellas County

Given how the pieces interlock, working through them in this order saves the most money, because the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for.

1. Confirm the address is unincorporated, through My Neighborhood, before anything else. A city address means a different rulebook and, in a few of them, no short-term rental at all.
2. Count the legal bedrooms and the parking together. Apply § 22-319(f) room by room, then divide your intended occupancy by three for the off-street spaces. The smaller number is your real cap, and your whole pro forma sits on it.
3. Price the compliance work before you buy. Pre-1973 houses need current-code egress in every bedroom, and new windows plus alarms are a real line item.
4. Get the Florida DBPR license, as a Vacation Rental Condo or Vacation Rental Dwelling, and remember District 3 renews on February 1 whatever your start date.
5. Register for tourist development tax with the Tax Collector, and open your Department of Revenue sales tax account at the same time.
6. Assemble the file. Deed or Property Appraiser profile, DBPR license, parking plan, Division of Corporations status if an entity owns it, and the notarized affidavit.
7. Apply through the Access Portal and pay the certificate fee. Watch the 20-business-day clock if the county comes back asking for anything.
8. Pay the inspection fee, then schedule. Fix whatever the correction notice lists inside 30 days, or ask for the extension if a permit is already in review.
9. Set up the operating layer on day one. Post the notice by the front door, put both numbers in every listing, and tell the Property Appraiser you're renting short term.
10. Diarize two dates. Renewal is due 60 days before the certificate expires, and the inspection comes back round every two years.

Work through that and you'll know whether the property clears the rules. Whether it clears your numbers is the other half, and the Florida short-term rental market rankings show how the Gulf coast compares with the rest of the state before you commit.

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

Wherever you get stuck in that sequence, four offices handle nearly all of it, and knowing which owns your question saves time on hold.

The Certificate of Use, inspections and complaints

The Pinellas County Code Enforcement Division handles applications, inspections, corrections and enforcement.

• Address: 631 Chestnut St., Clearwater, FL 33756
• Phone: (727) 464-4761, option 4 for short-term rental support; TDD (727) 464-3062
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, with a message line after hours
• 24/7 short-term rental hotline: (727) 353-2436
• Noise complaints: Sheriff's Office, (727) 582-6200, alongside the hotline

Have your record number ready when you call, because the county asks for it up front.

Tourist development tax

The Pinellas County Tax Collector handles the 6% tourist development tax: registration, returns and audits.

• Phone: 727-464-5007
• Email: [email protected]
• Mailing address: Pinellas County Tax Collector, P.O. Box 6440, Clearwater, FL 33758-6440
• Fax: 727-453-3193
• Reporting suspected evasion: [email protected]

The state license

The DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants issues the vacation rental license your county application depends on.

• Headquarters: 2601 Blair Stone Road, Tallahassee, FL 32399-1011
• Phone: 850-487-1395, the number the county's FAQ gives for license questions
• Email: [email protected]
• District 3 office, covering Pinellas: Park Trammell Building, 1313 Tampa Street, Suite 901, Tampa, FL 33602-3330, licenses expiring annually on February 1

State sales tax, and your homestead exemption

Sales tax, the surtax and dealer registration belong to the Florida Department of Revenue rather than any Pinellas office, and its taxpayer assistance line is 850-488-6800, Monday to Friday excluding holidays. The Pinellas County Property Appraiser deserves a line of its own too, on 727-464-3207, since § 22-319(g)(15) says you must notify that office of your intent to rent short term, and it decides what happens to your homestead exemption once you do.

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

Those offices only cover the unincorporated county, and that split is what owners around Tampa Bay complain about most, because the rules vary wildly across a fairly small place. What follows is my read of BiggerPockets threads I opened directly rather than a survey, and Reddit blocks automated access, so it wasn't part of this research.

• Investors treat "Pinellas" as too coarse a unit to decide anything. In a BiggerPockets thread on Clearwater and St. Pete short-term rental laws, a poster asked whether people were quietly operating anyway, and top contributor John Underwood gave the flat version: "Why take the risk on an area you know that isn't conducive to doing a STR?" The advice that follows is to pick the jurisdiction first and the house second.
• The 2011 grandfather clause explains the patchwork better than anything else. In a thread on Tampa Bay and beach-area rules, agent Dan Maciejewski gives the mechanism: "cities that already had laws prior to 2011 don't want to change or adjust them because they might lose the ability to ban STRs at all, and some of them can't keep up with enforcement in any case."
• The friendliest jurisdiction changes, and hosts track it closely. Maciejewski, in the same thread, on where he was heading next: "Gulfport now allows STRs in the entire city. In fact Gulfport is going to be my focus for my next investment." I haven't checked that against Gulfport's own code, so treat it as what an active local agent says rather than as the rule.
• Nobody argues the county program is optional. What owners debate now is the cost and the occupancy math, especially the parking divisor, rather than whether the certificate is real. That's a different conversation from the one people were having here two years ago.

That last shift is the thing to carry away, and it isn't only about Pinellas. A market changes character the moment compliance becomes checkable from a listing page rather than provable by an inspector at the door, because the cost of being wrong stops being a fine you might absorb and starts being a business you can't advertise. Wherever you're buying, the question to ask isn't how strict the rules read. It's how easily anyone can tell you've broken them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Pinellas County, Florida in 2026?

Yes, in unincorporated Pinellas County, provided you hold a county Certificate of Use, pass a life-safety inspection and carry a Florida DBPR vacation rental license. Florida law bars local governments from banning vacation rentals outright, so the county regulates instead. Properties inside the county's 24 municipalities answer to their own city ordinances, and several beach cities enforce tighter rules that predate June 1, 2011.

How much does a Pinellas County short-term rental Certificate of Use cost?

The Certificate of Use is $450 a year, split into two payments in the first year, plus a $150 initial inspection fee. A failed inspection costs $100 to re-inspect, renewal is $450, and the inspection every two years costs $100. All of it is non-refundable, so confirm the property can pass before applying. The Florida DBPR license is separate, at a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year.

What is the total tax on a short-term rental stay in Pinellas County?

13%. That's 6% Florida sales tax and a 1% Pinellas discretionary surtax, both remitted to the Florida Department of Revenue, plus a 6% tourist development tax remitted to the Pinellas County Tax Collector. Airbnb has collected the tourist development tax since December 2015 and Vrbo since October 2018, though the owner stays liable if a platform fails to remit, and direct bookings are yours to collect.

How many guests can a Pinellas County short-term rental sleep?

Two guests per bedroom plus two more in one common area, and never more than ten in total, with guests of every age counting. Off-street parking sets a second limit of one space per three occupants, rounded up, and the county applies whichever ceiling is lower. Bedrooms only count if they meet the ordinance definition: 70 square feet, an exterior wall, a closet, and an emergency escape opening.

What happens if you rent a Pinellas County property without a Certificate of Use?

Operating without a certificate violates § 22-319, punishable under county code § 1-8 by a fine of up to $500, with each day counted as a separate offense. The civil route bites harder, since a special magistrate can impose up to $1,000 per day for a first violation and $5,000 for a repeat, then record the order as a lien on any property you own in Pinellas County.

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