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

Do you own a place in Palm Beach County, Florida and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the county itself won't stand in your way. Unincorporated Palm Beach County has no vacation rental ordinance, no permit to apply for and no zoning rule that bans the use, and under Section 509.032(7)(b) of the Florida Statutes it couldn't adopt one now even if the commissioners wanted to. What the county does instead is register you and tax you, which is a very different sort of problem to solve.

The catch lives in your address rather than in the county code. Palm Beach County contains 39 incorporated municipalities as well as its unincorporated areas, and the moment you cross a city line you inherit that city's rules on top of the county's, which is why West Palm Beach won't let a short-term vacation rental take a booking of fewer than seven consecutive days while the county next door has no minimum at all. Then there's your homeowners association, which is where more deals in this county die than at any government counter, and the tax stack, which runs 12.5% on every stay of six months or less.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: which layer of government owns which rule, the registrations you need before your first guest arrives, what each one costs, how the tourist development tax works when the booking platforms don't collect it for you, how hard the county actually pushes, and who to call when something doesn't line up. Every figure below comes from Palm Beach County's own pages, the Constitutional Tax Collector's, or Florida's, checked in July 2026, and where a number sits on a form the county hasn't revised in a few years I've said so. Before you commit to a purchase here, run the property through BNBCalc first.

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

Before any of those numbers mean much, you need to know which rulebook your address answers to, and in Palm Beach County two of them stack in an order that explains almost everything else.

The bottom layer is Florida law, and it's unusually protective of owners. Section 509.032(7)(b) states that "a local law, ordinance, or regulation may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals," which takes the two blunt instruments other states hand to counties off the table entirely. There is one carve-out, though, and it matters more here than the rule itself does. The preemption doesn't reach local laws "adopted on or before June 1, 2011." So any Palm Beach County city that already had a minimum-stay rule or an outright ban on the books before that date gets to keep enforcing it, which is exactly how a county with no county-level restriction still ends up with a patchwork.

The top layer is the county's Tourist Development Ordinance, which sits in the tax chapter of the county code and yet decides whether you're allowed to advertise at all. The Tax Collector's own short-term rental business tax receipt application names Chapter 17, Article III, Section 17-117 of the Palm Beach County Code as the authority requiring one, and the county's June 2019 vacation rental ordinance package sets out the machinery behind it. That document defines a short term rental as any residential unit, or unit in a condominium or cooperative, or any one to four family dwelling, rented "for a period of 180 days or less in a calendar year," and it splits those into two kinds:

• Vacation Rental, where the host doesn't live on the property during the stay. That's the whole-home Airbnb most people mean.
• Home Sharing, where the host stays put and rents part of the place. Same registrations, a different code on the application.

What you won't find in Palm Beach County is a zoning rule aimed at either one. Reading through the current Unified Land Development Code, Supplement 32 as printed in October 2025, "vacation rental" appears exactly once across the use regulations in Article 4 and the definitions in Article 1, and it appears only in a list of things a recovery community is not. So there's no vacation rental use category, no district where the use is named as permitted or prohibited, and no separate county permit, because zoning here regulates buildings and uses in the ordinary way and short-term renting isn't one of the uses it names at all.

Cities are where that changes, though, and West Palm Beach is the one I checked directly. Its zoning code defines a short-term vacation rental as a residential structure rented "for a minimum of seven consecutive days," then adds that such rentals "shall possess a State of Florida Resort Condominium or Dwelling License," which means a two-night weekend booking is legal a mile outside the city limits and illegal inside them. So before you read another word about fees, make sure you know whether your parcel sits in a municipality or in unincorporated county, because half of this guide changes on that one answer.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Palm Beach County

Since the city line carries that much weight, the first task still isn't paperwork, and it isn't a phone call either. It's confirming exactly which jurisdiction your parcel sits in, and the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's site will tell you that along with the 17-digit Property Control Number you'll need for everything that follows.

Once you know the answer, the picture then forks. Land in unincorporated county and it's the state and the Tax Collector, full stop. Land inside one of the 39 municipalities and you add that city's own licensing, its zoning treatment, and possibly a minimum-stay rule that predates June 2011 and therefore survives the state preemption. Do check the city directly rather than trusting a summary, mine included, because these ordinances get amended and the grandfathering question turns on a date rather than on what the rule says.

Then comes the layer no statute helps you with. The county's own ordinance says plainly that where a host is subject to a lease, a homeowners association or a condominium association, "nothing in this Ordinance shall be inferred to grant any permission that invalidates provisions in those documents." State preemption binds governments, not your HOA board, so a community with a six-month minimum lease term in its declaration has effectively banned you, and the county won't intervene.

Investors who work this market say the same thing in blunter language. On BiggerPockets, a South Florida agent advising a buyer on Palm Beach County short-term rentals recommended single-family homes with "no HOA or at the very least an HOA with little restrictions," warning that "HOA rules [are] changing rapidly in our area."

That leaves you with one genuine business decision before any form gets filled in. A whole-home Vacation Rental and an owner-present Home Sharing arrangement carry the same registrations and the same taxes here, so the choice is about economics and about your association documents, not about compliance difficulty. Plenty of condo declarations that forbid a whole-unit rental have nothing to say about a spare bedroom.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Palm Beach County

Assuming your association documents leave you room and your parcel checks out, you're able to move on to the registrations themselves, and there are still four of them sitting at three different levels of government.

The state license comes first. Florida wants a vacation rental license from the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants for any transient public lodging establishment, and Section 509.241 of the Florida Statutes puts it flatly: "each public lodging establishment... shall obtain a license from the division." Yours gets classified either Vacation Rental Dwelling or Vacation Rental Condo depending on the building, though the paperwork is the same either way. The Division's lodging fee schedule puts a new single-unit license at a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year, or $90 for a half year, with a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee on top. Licenses renew annually on a staggered schedule, so make sure you note your own renewal date, and you have 30 days to report an address change through your online account.

Then the county tourist development tax account. You create it through the Tax Collector's tourist development tax portal, one account per rental property, and the county's own how-to guide from February 2025 says you'll need a mailing address and that Property Control Number to open one. You come out with a nine-digit account number in the form TDT#0000xxxxx.

Then the short-term rental business tax receipt, which is where people trip. It's a separate application, it hangs off the tax account you just opened, and the application form prices it at $33.00 for a full year if the business starts between October 1 and March 31, or $16.50 for a half year if it starts between April 1 and September 30. That form was last revised in September 2020, so treat the dollar figure as the county's published number rather than a quote, and confirm it when you apply. Three details on it are worth reading twice: this receipt "cannot be transferred" and is valid only for the one property and account named on it, you need a separate account and receipt for every property you own, and this particular type of receipt "does not require zoning approval." Hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts do need zoning sign-off and use the regular business tax application instead.

Finally, register with the Florida Department of Revenue so you can collect and hand over state sales tax on the rental. That's a tax registration rather than a license, and it's covered in the tax section below.

Renewal is an annual event with a hard edge. The business tax receipt has to be renewed by September 30 each year, after which the county's business tax page sets out a penalty ladder that starts at 10% on October 1 and climbs through 15% in November, 20% plus a $10 fee in December, 25% plus $10 in January, another $250 in February, and a $75 collection fee in April. Miss the window and, per the county's 2019 ordinance package, the rental "shall be removed from all Hosting Platforms" until you're current.

The penalties behind all of this are stiffer than the fees suggest. That same county document sets civil penalties of up to $500 per day, per unit, for the period a host stays out of compliance, applies the identical exposure to booking platforms, and lets the Tax Collector revoke a registration outright, after which the host "must wait at least one (1) year before re-applying." Keep in mind that $500 a day isn't a one-time fine. It accrues. Leave a non-compliant listing up for a month and that's $15,000 on a single unit, which is how a paperwork oversight turns into a number that hurts.

Required Documents for Palm Beach County Short-Term Rentals

Since none of those fees come back if you file the wrong thing, it's worth assembling the paperwork before you open a single application. The list is mercifully short compared with what other counties ask for, and most of it you'll have already.

• Your Property Control Number, the 17-digit identifier in the format 11-22-33-44-55-666-7777, taken from the Property Appraiser's record for the parcel.
• The tourist development tax account number, which the business tax receipt application marks as required. This is why the order matters: open the tax account first, then apply for the receipt.
• Ownership details matching the deed, since the property owner signs the application personally, under penalty of perjury.
• The rental property address and your mailing address, which don't have to match but both get recorded.
• Your choice of category, Vacation Rental or Home Sharing, ticked on the form. Internally the county codes these 53-1115 and 53-1116 respectively.
• A list of the platforms you'll advertise on. The county's ordinance requires the registration application to name every hosting platform you intend to use, and to be updated when that changes.
• Your state DBPR license, which West Palm Beach and several other cities require by name, and which the state requires regardless of what your city asks for.

Filing online is faster. But if you'd rather post the whole thing, the completed form goes to Tax Collector, Palm Beach County, Attn. Tourist Development Tax, PO Box 3715, West Palm Beach, FL 33402-3715, with payment made out to Tax Collector, Palm Beach County.

Two ongoing record-keeping duties attach once you're registered, and they're the part everyone forgets until an auditor asks. The Tax Collector's guide tells hosts to "maintain complete and accurate records of all rental receipts, all taxes collected, and any pertinent documents" and to keep them for at least three years, because you can be audited under Section 212.12 of the Florida Statutes. The county ordinance is more specific about what those records have to show, namely the number and length of every rental stay and the price paid for each one, inspectable by the Tax Collector on request. Don't forget that your listing itself carries a display duty too, since the Tax Collector wants the tourist development tax account number and the business tax receipt number showing on your online listings.

Palm Beach County Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get all of that filed and are able to start taking bookings, there's still the tax to work through, and this is the section where Palm Beach County genuinely differs from most of Florida. Two separate governments tax the same stay, one of them changed its rate on January 1 of this year, and only one of the two gets collected for you by the platforms. Here's how the stack looks as of July 2026.

Charge	Rate	Collected and remitted by
Tourist Development Tax	6.0%	You, monthly, to the Palm Beach County Tax Collector
Florida sales and use tax	6.0%	Airbnb, as marketplace facilitator
School capital outlay surtax	0.5%	Airbnb, with the state tax
Total on a stay of six months or less	12.5%	Split between the two, as above

Tourist Development Tax (TDT)

The county's own bed tax is 6% of total taxable rental receipts on any accommodation rented for six months or less, and the Tax Collector's tourist development tax page is explicit that it's "an add-on tax and must be paid in addition to state sales tax." It reaches more of your revenue than you might expect, because it applies to mandatory fees such as cleaning and pet charges, not only the nightly rate.

New hosts get caught by the next bit more than by anything else here, and it's the most expensive misunderstanding available in this county: Airbnb doesn't pay the bed tax over for you. The Tax Collector's support center puts it in one line: "Hosting Platforms do not remit your TDT taxes to Palm Beach County Tax Collector." Airbnb agrees from its own side, since its Palm Beach County help page tells hosts that "Palm Beach County requires you to collect the TDT from the guest and remit it via your TDT account number."

So Palm Beach doesn't appear on the list of Florida counties where Airbnb collects the local tourist tax, unlike Collier, Sarasota, Pinellas and about two dozen others. If you host in more than one Florida county, be aware that the rule flips county by county, which is worth checking against the Collier County guide if you're comparing the two.

So the filing is on you. It's monthly, too, not quarterly. Returns are due on the 1st and are late after the 20th, they're filed electronically through the tourist development tax portal, and a $0.00 return is required for any month with no rental activity at all. You can file up to six months ahead if you'd rather clear the calendar. The Tax Collector applies late fees and interest without waivers, saying so directly: "It is the taxpayer's responsibility to understand the filing deadlines."

Florida Sales Tax

The state's 6% sales and use tax applies to rental charges for living, sleeping or housekeeping accommodations of six months or less, per the Department of Revenue's GT-800034 brochure. This one the platform generally handles, since Airbnb registers as a marketplace facilitator under Section 212.05965 of the Florida Statutes and collects what it calls the Florida transient rental tax, 6% of the listing price including any cleaning fee, on every reservation of 182 nights or shorter. Take bookings direct, off-platform, and that duty comes straight back to you, so make sure you've registered with the Department of Revenue before your first direct booking rather than after.

Discretionary Sales Surtax

The surtax is the number that changed here, and it's the reason a 2024-era spreadsheet for this county now overstates the tax. A Department of Revenue tax information publication issued December 1, 2025, TIP 25A01-15, records that county voters approved a 0.5% school capital outlay surtax effective January 1, 2026, while the Board of County Commissioners repealed the county's 1% infrastructure surtax effective December 31, 2025 by Ordinance 2025-008. The publication states the net effect plainly, that "beginning January 1, 2026, the total state and local sales and use tax rate for Palm Beach County will decrease from 7% to 6.5%."

So add the 6% bed tax and a guest now pays 12.5%, against the 13% they paid through 2025. The surtax rides along with the state tax and goes to the Department of Revenue, not to the county, which means the only check you write to Palm Beach County is the bed tax one.

Possible Deductions and Write-Offs

Florida makes this simpler than most states, because there's no state layer to file at all. The Department of Revenue's own FAQ says "Florida does not impose a personal income tax, so there are no filing requirements," which means your rental profit is a federal question only. The usual short-term rental deductions apply there: the DBPR license fee, the $33 business tax receipt, cleaning and management fees, insurance, repairs, furnishings and depreciation, plus mortgage interest and property tax apportioned for any personal use. Remember that the taxes you collect from guests were never your income in the first place, so run them through a separate line rather than booking them as revenue and deducting them later.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That absence of a state income tax is only the friendliest piece of a state framework that decides most of what Palm Beach County is allowed to do to you in the first place.

The core of it is the preemption already quoted. Since 2011, Florida cities and counties have been barred from prohibiting vacation rentals or regulating how long or how often a home can be rented, with anything on the books by June 1, 2011 grandfathered in. Everything else stays local: zoning, noise, parking, building and life-safety codes are all untouched by the preemption, which is why a county can still cite you for a code violation at a short-term rental even though it can't ban the rental itself.

The licensing side is genuinely statewide. Section 509.242 of the Florida Statutes defines a vacation rental as a condominium or cooperative unit, or an individually or collectively owned one to four family dwelling, that operates as a transient public lodging establishment, and section 509.241 is what requires the license. What counts as "transient" was rewritten recently, though, and it's the change most likely to catch a mid-term operator. Chapter 2025-113, formerly SB 606, signed June 2, 2025 and in force since July 1 that year, sets the test at renting more than three times in a calendar year for periods of fewer than 30 consecutive days, counted in consecutive days rather than calendar months. It also drops the old presumption built on the operator's stated intent, so rent four times a year on 29-night stays and you're a licensed vacation rental now.

Two things people expect to find in Florida law are not there, and both are worth knowing before you plan around them. There is no statewide short-term rental registry: the 2024 package that would've created one along with an expanded preemption and an advertising-platform framework, SB 280, passed both chambers and was vetoed on June 27, 2024, while its House companion HB 1537 was laid on the table that March. Neither is law, and no equivalent bill has replaced them.

Nor is there a statewide pool-safety requirement for vacation rentals yet, though the legislature came close: SB 658 would've required water-safety features and a compliance certificate for licensees within 150 feet of a pool or water body, passed the Senate 37 to 0 on February 19, 2026, then died in messages on March 13, 2026, with HB 79 dying in a House subcommittee the same day. My guess is that one comes back in 2027, so if you're buying a waterfront property here, budget for it as a probability rather than treating it as settled.

For the wider picture, our Florida statewide guide covers the framework in full, and the counties around the state apply it very differently: Osceola County sits in the Orlando tourist corridor with its own overlay of rules, while Sarasota County shows what a Gulf-coast county does with the same statute.

Does Palm Beach County Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

State law sets the ceiling on what Palm Beach County can ask for, yet it says nothing about how hard the county pushes on the things it can ask, and here the honest answer splits cleanly in two.

On tax, the county is one of the more determined enforcers in Florida, and the architecture explains why. Because the platforms don't remit the bed tax, the Tax Collector built a system that watches the platforms instead of trusting them. The county's 2019 ordinance package requires every hosting platform and booking service to file an electronic report with the Tax Collector by the fifth day of each month listing, for every Palm Beach County property advertised on it, the tourist development tax account number, the parcel identification number, the property address, the host's name, and the total nights rented with the amount paid for each stay.

On top of that, the ordinance makes the platform get a valid, active account number and business tax receipt before it accepts a listing at all, and print both on every piece of advertising. Where a host never registers at all, the ordinance lets the Tax Collector "administratively open a TOT account" for an address it has reasonable suspicion is being rented, and then pursue it with the ordinary tax enforcement machinery.

Layer a public tourist development tax registry on top of that, where anyone can look up whether a given rental property's account number and business tax receipt number are real, and the practical position is that an unregistered whole-home listing in this county is visible to the county, to your neighbors and to the platform at the same time. The monthly $0 return requirement quietly does the same work from the other direction, since a host who registers and then goes quiet stands out immediately.

This didn't arrive gently, either. The county first took up short-term rental regulation in 2018, when CBS12 reported the first reading on September 18 of that year, with then-Commissioner Paulette Burdick describing it as "creating an equitable playing field and creating transparency." The June 2019 amendments tightened the platform obligations further, and Airbnb sued the county over them that August before the parties settled.

On zoning and nuisance, enforcement works the way it does everywhere: someone complains. Palm Beach County Code Compliance takes complaints by phone and email, and there's one procedural detail worth knowing in both directions. Since July 1, 2021, the county's complaint page explains, "a Code Enforcement Officer may not initiate an investigation of a potential violation by way of an anonymous complaint," so a neighbor has to put their name and address to it unless the problem is an imminent threat to health or safety.

Then there's what happens when a case reaches the special magistrate. The Unified Land Development Code authorizes fines of up to $1,000 per day for a first violation and $5,000 per day for a repeat one, plus repair costs, rising to $15,000 for a violation found irreparable or irreversible. Those fines become a lien on the property, and they keep accruing until you come into compliance.

So the fair summary is that nobody in unincorporated Palm Beach County will cite you for running an Airbnb. There's no rule to cite. They'll come at you for the parking, the noise, the unpermitted addition, or for the bed tax you never paid over.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Palm Beach County

Given how the money side gets enforced, the sequence below is worth following in order, because two of the steps are gates rather than tasks and finding that out late costs you the fees you've already paid.

1. Pin down your jurisdiction and pull your Property Control Number. Look the parcel up on the Property Appraiser's site. Unincorporated county means the state and the Tax Collector only; a municipality means one more rulebook, and possibly a minimum-stay rule that survived the 2011 preemption.
2. Read your association documents and your deed restrictions. A six-month minimum lease term in a condominium declaration ends the project, and no county registration overrides it. Do this before you buy if you can, because it's the cheapest step and the one most likely to stop you.
3. Apply for the DBPR vacation rental license. Vacation Rental Dwelling or Vacation Rental Condo, $50 application plus $170 for a full year on a single unit, plus the $10 education fee.
4. Open a tourist development tax account through the Tax Collector's portal, one per property, using the Property Control Number and a mailing address. Note the nine-digit account number you get back.
5. File the short-term rental business tax receipt application for that account, $33 for a full year or $16.50 for a half year, ticking Vacation Rental or Home Sharing. One per unit, non-transferable, no zoning approval needed for this type.
6. Register with the Florida Department of Revenue for sales tax, which you'll need whether or not Airbnb collects on your platform bookings, since a single direct booking makes it yours.
7. Put both numbers on the listing. The tourist development tax account number and the business tax receipt number belong in the advertisement itself, and the platforms are required to ask for them.
8. Set up the monthly rhythm on day one. A tourist development tax return every month, due the 1st and late after the 20th, filed even when it's $0.00, plus three years of records showing the length and price of every stay.
9. Diary September 30 permanently. The business tax receipt renews annually by that date, and the penalty ladder starts the next morning at 10%.

Before you get that far, it's worth pressure-testing whether the numbers justify the work. Palm Beach County sits in one of the more expensive purchase markets in the state, and the Florida short-term rental market rankings are a quick way to see how it stacks up against the Gulf coast and the Orlando corridor on revenue and occupancy before you commit to a county where the tax admin is monthly.

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

Wherever that sequence stalls, three offices handle nearly all of it between them. Start with the Tax Collector. Knowing which of the three owns your particular question saves a genuinely irritating amount of time on hold.

Tax accounts, business tax receipts and the bed tax

The Constitutional Tax Collector, Serving Palm Beach County administers both the tourist development tax and the local business tax receipt, which makes it your first call for almost everything county-level.

• Address: Governmental Center, 301 North Olive Avenue, 3rd Floor, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
• General: (561) 355-2264
• Tourist development tax team: (561) 355-3547
• Email: [email protected]
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:15 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Mail applications to: Tax Collector, Palm Beach County, Attn. Tourist Development Tax, PO Box 3715, West Palm Beach, FL 33402-3715

Zoning, code compliance and complaints

Palm Beach County Planning, Zoning and Building covers zoning questions for unincorporated areas, and its Code Compliance division handles violations.

• Main office: 2300 N Jog Road, West Palm Beach, FL 33411-2741, (561) 233-5000
• Code Compliance: (561) 233-5500, or the on-call officer at (561) 233-5523
• Email: [email protected]
• South county office: 345 S. Congress Avenue, Room 102, Delray Beach, FL 33444, (561) 276-1284
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with Zoning taking its last walk-in at 4:30 p.m.

Anything inside a municipality goes to that city's own planning department instead, not to this one.

State licensing and state tax

The DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants issues and renews the vacation rental license: 2601 Blair Stone Road, Tallahassee, FL 32399-1011, (850) 487-1395, [email protected].

For sales tax and the surtax, the Florida Department of Revenue runs taxpayer services on (850) 488-6800, Monday to Friday excluding holidays, and answers written questions at [email protected].

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

Calling those offices is one way to learn how this works in practice. Reading what other hosts say is the other, though it comes with a caveat I'd rather state up front: Reddit blocks automated access, so I couldn't read those threads for this refresh and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What follows is drawn from BiggerPockets discussions I could open, plus the pattern the county's own documents imply, and it's a read rather than a survey.

• The association, not the county, is what hosts argue about. The BiggerPockets thread on Palm Beach County short-term rentals turns almost immediately to condominium and homeowners association restrictions, with the advice landing on single-family homes with light or absent HOAs, and a warning that the rules are "changing rapidly in our area." That matches the legal position exactly, since the one restriction the state can't preempt is a private one.
• The bed tax surprises people. Hosts arriving from counties where Airbnb remits everything expect the same here, and Palm Beach is one of the Florida counties where it doesn't. The monthly return, including the $0.00 months, is the recurring administrative complaint.
• City-versus-county confusion is constant. A "Palm Beach County" question usually turns out to be a West Palm Beach question or a Delray Beach question, and the answers diverge sharply. Any advice you read that doesn't name a jurisdiction is worth discounting on that basis alone.
• The market itself still gets defended. The same agent who warned about associations argued that "with the right deal there is plenty of money to be made," which is roughly where sentiment sits: the regulation isn't the obstacle here, the purchase price and the association are.

There's a broader lesson in that, and it isn't specific to this county. Where a state protects the right to rent, the fight doesn't disappear, it just moves somewhere the statute can't reach, into private covenants, into tax administration, into the code-enforcement complaints a neighbor is willing to sign their name to. So when you're sizing up any permissive market, read the documents nobody publishes on a government website first. Those are the ones that will decide whether you get to operate.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Yes. Unincorporated Palm Beach County has no vacation rental ordinance, no local permit and no zoning rule that prohibits short-term renting, and Florida law bars local governments from banning vacation rentals or regulating how long or how often a home is rented. You will need a state vacation rental license, a county tourist development tax account and a county short-term rental business tax receipt. Municipalities within the county can be stricter, and private homeowners association rules are not preempted at all.

How much does a Palm Beach County short-term rental business tax receipt cost?

The county's short-term rental business tax receipt application lists $33.00 for a full year, for a business starting between October 1 and March 31, or $16.50 for a half year for one starting between April 1 and September 30. You need one for every rental property, tied to that property's tourist development tax account, and it cannot be transferred. Renewal is due by September 30 each year, after which penalties start at 10% and climb monthly.

Does Airbnb collect Palm Beach County tourist development tax?

No. Airbnb collects Florida's 6% state transient rental tax and the discretionary sales surtax as a marketplace facilitator, but the Palm Beach County Tax Collector states that hosting platforms do not remit the county's 6% tourist development tax. Hosts collect it from the guest and file a return every month, due on the 1st and late after the 20th, including a $0.00 return in months with no bookings. Palm Beach is not among the Florida counties on Airbnb's local-tax collection list.

What is the total tax on a short-term stay in Palm Beach County?

12.5% as of 2026, on any accommodation rented for six months or less. That is the county's 6% tourist development tax plus Florida's 6% state sales and use tax plus a 0.5% school capital outlay surtax. The total dropped from 13% on January 1, 2026, when the county's 1% infrastructure surtax was repealed and the smaller school surtax replaced it. The tourist development tax also applies to mandatory fees such as cleaning and pet charges.

Do I need a state license as well as the county registrations?

Yes, and it is separate from anything the county issues. Florida requires a vacation rental license from the DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants for condominium units, cooperative units and one to four family dwellings rented as transient lodging. A single-unit license costs a $50 application fee plus $170 for a full year and a $10 education fee, and renews annually. Since July 2025, "transient" means renting more than three times a year for periods of fewer than 30 consecutive days.

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