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

Do you own a place in Ajax and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that the answer is now a clear yes, which is more than an Ajax host could have said a year ago. Ajax is a town in the Regional Municipality of Durham, on the eastern edge of the Greater Toronto Area, and until this summer its zoning by-law had never once used the phrase "short-term rental". On June 22, 2026 Council changed that, and a short stay is finally a named, permitted use here.

Unfortunately, the permission arrived with conditions attached, and they're the kind that decide whether a purchase makes sense at all. The unit has to be your principal residence, you get a maximum of 180 days of short-term renting in a calendar year, and no single booking can run past 28 consecutive days. There's still no licence to apply for, mind you, so nobody is going to send you a renewal notice. There is a 5% Municipal Accommodation Tax though, and because Airbnb and Vrbo don't collect it in Ajax, you're the one who has to.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: which zone your address sits in, why the missing licence isn't the good news it looks like, the taxes you'll be collecting and remitting yourself, how enforcement works in a town that fields more than 6,000 by-law complaints a year, and who to call at 65 Harwood Avenue South. Every figure below comes from the Town of Ajax's, Ontario's or the federal government's own documents, checked in July 2026. Before you commit to anything on the strength of nightly rates, do run the property through BNBCalc at 180 nights rather than 365.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Ajax

That 180-night ceiling isn't a rule of thumb someone at the Town suggested. It's written into the zoning by-law, and it's one of four conditions that together decide whether your plan survives.

All four sit in a brand new Section 4.28, added by By-law 60-2026 on June 22, 2026.

Short-term rentals are only permitted in zones where they're listed as a permitted use. A stay can't exceed 28 consecutive days. The combined number of days in a calendar year that a dwelling functions as a short-term rental can't exceed 180. And the dwelling "shall be the principal residence of the operator, as defined in the Income Tax Act, 1985."

Read that fourth one twice, because it's the one that closes the door on the model most investors arrive with.

Ajax also drew a line between two things people had been treating as interchangeable. By-law 59-2026 defines a short-term rental as a dwelling made available by its owner or occupant for temporary lodging in exchange for payment. It then adds the distinction that does the work, saying a short-term rental "is different and distinct from a bed and breakfast establishment in that the owner/occupant of a short-term rental does not reside within the dwelling or dwelling unit during the term of the rental."

So a bed and breakfast is you at home with guests down the hall. A short-term rental is you out of the house while somebody else stays in it. Same building, different use, different rules.

The zone question is easy to answer and worth answering first. Going through the revised permitted use table in By-law 62-2026, short-term rental now carries a permission in R1-A, R1-B, R1-C, R1-D, R1-E, R1-F, R2-A, R2-B, R3, RM4, RM5 and RM6. That's every residential zone in Ajax except two.

The exceptions are CR-A and CR-B, the Country Residential zones. Which is a little backwards, since those are the big rural lots with room to park four cars off the road. A bed and breakfast is still permitted there, in a detached dwelling only, capped at three bedrooms.

Now for what this means if you were planning to buy. Unfortunately for most people reading this, the numbers stop working before you get to the spreadsheet, because a principal residence is somewhere you actually live. You can't hold three Ajax townhouses and call each one your principal residence, and no corporate structure fixes that, since the by-law attaches the test to the operator rather than to the title.

What's left is a genuinely good deal for the right person. Assuming you live in Ajax already and are able to clear the house for part of the year, you can list your own home for up to 180 days, in almost any residential zone, with no licence, no inspection and no application fee.

Just make sure you count the days properly, because 180 is a combined annual figure rather than a per-booking allowance. Twenty-six weekends of two nights each already puts you at 52. A full summer plus every long weekend gets you close to the ceiling faster than most people expect.

One caveat on timing, and I want to be straight about it.

The Notice of Passing set an Ontario Land Tribunal appeal deadline of 4:30 p.m. on July 20, 2026, and under section 34(21) of the Planning Act a by-law with no appeal filed against it is deemed to have come into force on the day it was passed. I couldn't confirm from the Town's published record whether anyone appealed, so do confirm the current status with Planning before you rely on the date.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Ajax

Given four conditions that specific, you'd expect a licence sitting on top of them with a form, a fee and an annual renewal. There isn't one, and the absence is thorough rather than accidental.

The Town's own list of by-law forms, permits and licensing applications runs from crisis care facilities and fireworks through kennels, pet shops, refreshment vehicles and taxicab brokers to transportation network companies. Accommodation appears exactly once on it, as a Lodging House licence. Short-term rental appears nowhere, and neither does bed and breakfast. The Town's list of common by-laws carries no short-term rental by-law either.

Here's why that matters more than it sounds like it should. Section 67.7 of the federal Income Tax Act denies expense deductions to a "non-compliant short-term rental", and it defines that two ways: one operating where the municipality doesn't permit the use, and one that fails a registration, licence or permit requirement where such a requirement exists.

Ajax hosts used to fail the first limb, because before June 2026 the zoning by-law permitted no such use. Section 1.2 of Zoning By-law 95-2003 is blunt about how that works: "Any use not specifically permitted by this By-law shall not be permitted in the Town of Ajax."

Now the use is permitted, and there's no licence requirement to fail either. So a host who genuinely meets Section 4.28 clears both limbs of the federal test, which means they get to keep deducting the mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, cleaning and platform fees on their hosting days. That's worth far more than the licence fee you aren't paying.

Break Section 4.28 and you're back on the wrong side of it, mind you, with no form to file your way out of.

The one adjacent licence worth knowing about is the Lodging House. It covers a building with three to ten lodging units that doesn't function as a dwelling unit, it's permitted in the Country Residential and R1 zones, and the 2026 User Fees and Charges By-law 67-2025 prices the licence at $175.70.

That's a rooming house rather than an Airbnb, though, and the zoning by-law's own definition excludes hotels and bed and breakfasts from it. Don't try to route a nightly rental through that door.

Where your property doesn't fit Section 4.28, the only real route is a zoning by-law amendment, and Ajax has priced that as the serious undertaking it is.

As of July 2026, the same fee by-law charges $52,507.40 for a simple zoning by-law amendment and $54,720.90 for a complex one, on top of $3,617.40 for the pre-consultation meeting you have to hold first. A residential minor variance is cheaper at $1,701.20 for a single variance and $2,127.00 for multiple, plus $713.50 to pre-consult.

None of it comes back if Council or the Committee of Adjustment says no.

All of this traces back to a single council motion.

On January 20, 2025, Mayor Collier and Councillor Henry moved a motion to implement a short-term rental framework in Ajax. It told Planning to permit short-term rentals in urban residential zones through the Town's zoning by-law review, and it told Corporate Services to "establish a condition that all short-term rental operators in Ajax are operating out of their principal residence".

Eighteen months later, that sentence is Section 4.28.

Required Documents for Ajax Short-Term Rentals

With no licence application to fill in, nobody hands you a document checklist either. You still need the paperwork, mind you. You just have to assemble it for yourself, and you'll only find out what's missing at the worst possible moment, which is when a by-law officer or an auditor asks.

Four things do real work here.

• Proof that the home is your principal residence. Section 4.28 borrows the Income Tax Act test, so the evidence that satisfies the Canada Revenue Agency is the evidence to keep: your address on your tax return, your driver's licence, your utility accounts and your insurance. Keep in mind that a by-law officer asking this question is asking about a specific calendar year, not about today.
• A day-level booking log. The 180-day cap is arithmetic on days, so a spreadsheet with check-in and check-out dates for every stay is the difference between a defensible position and an argument you lose.
• Your Municipal Accommodation Tax records. The Town issues you a MAT Identification Number after your first remittance, and By-law 09-2025 requires you to keep books and accounts sufficient to show the tax collected and remitted for no less than seven years. File one remittance per property address, even if you list on three platforms.
• CRA registration, once you cross the threshold. You'll want a business number and a GST/HST account if your taxable supplies pass $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, the small supplier limit set by section 148 of the Excise Tax Act.

Two more sit slightly off to the side.

Any physical change to create a guest room, add a bathroom or alter an exit can pull in a building permit, and a house taking paying guests carries Ontario Fire Code obligations a private home doesn't. Ask Ajax's building division before the contractor starts rather than after.

Nothing in the Town's list asks you to file proof of insurance either, which isn't the same as saying your insurer won't care. Do tell them, because a standard homeowner's policy generally isn't written for paying guests.

Ajax Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you're able to satisfy all of that and start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and Ajax's version has an unusual wrinkle in it. Three layers apply, and you personally collect two of them.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Municipal Accommodation Tax	5% of the purchase price	You, remitted to the Town of Ajax
HST	13% in Ontario	The platform when you're not registered, otherwise you
Income tax	your marginal rate	CRA, self-reported

The municipal layer is the newer one and the one people miss. By-law 09-2025, passed on January 20, 2025 and in force since April 1, 2025, imposes 5% of the purchase price on accommodation bought for 28 consecutive days or less and more than four hours.

The purchase price includes fees and surcharges for extra occupants and beds, and it excludes HST. You have to show the charge as its own line item on the bill, labelled "Municipal Accommodation Tax".

Now the wrinkle. The Town's Accommodation Providers FAQ says it plainly: "Airbnb and VRBO will not be collecting the MAT on behalf of Town of Ajax hosts." In most Ontario cities the platform handles this invisibly. In Ajax you add it yourself through the platform's tax tools, then file it yourself.

Short-term rental operators file quarterly, by April 15, July 15, October 15 and January 15, per the Town's municipal accommodation tax guidance. Section 6 of the by-law itself reads monthly, so the quarterly cycle is the Town's published accommodation for short-term rental operators rather than the by-law text. I'd take the Town's operator guidance and keep the email confirming it.

A nil quarter still needs a return. Overdue remittances attract interest at 1.25% a month, and the Town can add unpaid tax, interest and penalties to the tax roll for any Ajax property in your name, where they become a lien on the land.

The enforcement teeth are sharper than most municipal tax by-laws carry.

Town staff or appointed auditors can inspect and audit all of your books, the Treasurer can reassess within three years and without limit where there's been misrepresentation, and a first conviction runs from $300 to $50,000 for an individual and $500 to $100,000 for a corporation. A continuing offence draws $500 to $10,000 for each day, and the by-law says the total of the daily fines isn't limited to $100,000.

The federal layer is more familiar. The CRA's guidance on platform-based short-term accommodation applies HST to stays occupied for less than one month costing more than $20 a night, at 13% in Ontario, and where the host isn't registered the platform charges and collects it. Watch out for one interaction: the Town's FAQ notes the MAT is subject to HST only if you're HST registered, so registering changes what your guest's total looks like.

Then there's section 67.7, which never appears on a guest invoice and costs the most when it bites. It denies your otherwise deductible expenses in proportion to the days the property was a non-compliant short-term rental. Blow past 180 days, or rent out a place you don't live in, and the mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, cleaning and platform fees for those days stop being deductible while the rent stays taxable.

Ontario Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

That federal deduction rule is the only short-term rental measure reaching down into Ajax from above, which tells you how little of this Ontario handles itself.

Unlike British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario runs no provincial short-term rental registry and has passed no provincial short-term rental statute. There's no provincial number to display in a listing, no province-wide principal residence rule, and no province-wide night cap. Every one of Ajax's rules is Ajax's own choice.

What Ontario does instead is hand municipalities the tools. Licensing powers live in Part IV of the Municipal Act, 2001, the accommodation tax power lives in section 400.1 of the same act with O. Reg. 435/17 setting the frame, and land use runs through the Planning Act. Ajax used two of those three and left licensing alone, which is why it looks nothing like Toronto or Ottawa.

The Planning Act supplies the consequences as well. Section 34 is the authority Council used to pass the ten by-laws in June, and section 67 sets what happens when you contravene one. A first conviction draws a fine of up to $25,000, and every subsequent conviction draws up to $10,000 for each day the contravention continues after that.

A corporation faces up to $50,000, then $25,000 a day. The court can also order you to stop, and under section 67.1 the fine money goes to the municipality's own treasurer rather than to the province.

One structural change is worth knowing before you go looking for the wrong phone number. Ajax's zoning and land use page records that as of January 1, 2025 Durham Region became an upper-tier municipality without planning responsibilities, and the Regional Official Plan folded into the official plans of Durham's eight local municipalities. Planning questions about your Ajax address are answered in Ajax, and nowhere else.

The other provincial rule genuinely helps, and it's the one hosts forget. Nothing in Section 4.28 touches long stays, and once a stay stretches past a month it stops looking like accommodation and starts looking like a tenancy.

Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act covers most private residential rental units, so a furnished mid-term rental in Ajax comes with Landlord and Tenant Board rules attached.

Be aware that this cuts both ways. You escape the 180-day cap, the 5% tax and the principal residence test, yet you pick up notice periods, rent rules and a tenant rather than a guest.

Does Ajax Strictly Enforce STR Rules? Is Ajax Airbnb Friendly?

Since that mid-term route exists, the friendliness question still comes down to who's asking. Ajax is genuinely friendly to a resident who wants to rent their own home part of the year, and closed to an investor who wants a second unit on nightly rates.

Both things are true at once, and the by-law was written that way on purpose.

Enforcement, meanwhile, is complaint-driven, and the Town is unusually open about the volume. Its By-law Services page states that "By-law receives in excess of 6,000 By-law complaints a year", and that it does not accept anonymous complaints: every complaint, email included, has to carry the complainant's name, address and phone number.

Sit with that for a second, because it works in both directions. Nobody is scanning listings for you, so a quiet house with parking on the driveway is unlikely to generate a file. A neighbour who does complain has to put their name to it, which raises the bar a little and makes the complaint far more durable once it's made. Reports go in by phone on 365-282-6100, by email, or through the Town's HeyJax portal.

What happens after that escalates in steps you can price. A zoning contravention is a Planning Act offence, so the $25,000 and $10,000-a-day figures above are live rather than theoretical.

Noise is the second front, and usually the first one to open.

Ajax passed a new Noise By-law, 04-2026, on January 19, 2026, replacing the 2025 version, and its penalty section is not gentle. The maximum fine is $100,000. A continuing offence runs a minimum of $500 and a maximum of $10,000 for each day, with the daily total explicitly not limited to $100,000. Where the offence produced economic gain, a special fine can be added that may exceed $100,000, and the court may increase any fine by the financial benefit you acquired.

Section 5.5 is the one that should worry a short-term rental host most: if the owner or occupier of premises where a nuisance party is held is present, they're presumed to be hosting it. The Town's Public Nuisance and Safety By-law 46-2025 carries the same presumption and the same penalty ladder.

Add the tax side and the exposure compounds. The MAT by-law lets the Town audit your books, reassess three years back, and register the arrears against your property, so a host who quietly skips the filings can still be found and billed years later.

I should be straight about the limits of what I could establish. Going through the Town's published record, I found no short-term rental enforcement statistics, no prosecution reports and no MAT collection figures, so I can't tell you how many Ajax hosts have actually been charged with anything. What I can tell you is that the legal exposure sits there regardless, and that section 67.7 applies to your tax return whether or not a by-law officer ever knocks.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Ajax

Given how much of this turns on facts about one specific address and one specific person, the order below matters. The early steps are free and tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting.

1. Check that the home is genuinely your principal residence. This is the condition that disqualifies most people, it uses the Income Tax Act test, and no amount of paperwork works around it. Fail here and stop.
2. Find your zone. Short-term rental is a permitted use in R1-A through RM6. It is not permitted in CR-A or CR-B. Use the Town's zoning maps or email [email protected] with your address, and get the answer in writing.
3. Confirm Z10/26 is in force and unappealed. The by-laws passed on June 22, 2026 with an appeal deadline of July 20, 2026. Ask Planning to confirm the status before you list.
4. Design the calendar around 180 days. Decide up front which 180 days earn the most, because the cap is annual and combined, and it isn't a target you want to discover in November.
5. Cap every booking at 28 consecutive days. Anything longer stops being a short-term rental under Section 4.28 and starts raising tenancy questions instead.
6. Sort out building and fire before you list. New guest rooms, altered exits or a second kitchen usually mean a building permit, and the Fire Code treats a house with paying guests differently.
7. Turn on the Municipal Accommodation Tax in your listing. Add 5% through the platform's tax tools, show it as its own line, then file quarterly to [email protected]. Don't forget the nil returns.
8. Register for HST if you cross $30,000, and understand that where you aren't registered the platform charges the 13% instead of you.
9. Keep day-level records from night one. The 180-day cap, the MAT audit power and section 67.7 all run on dates, and the by-law wants seven years of them.

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

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, almost all of it runs through one building, and knowing which desk owns your question saves a week of transfers.

Zoning, permitted uses and the new Section 4.28

Planning and Development Services answer what your property is zoned, whether short-term rental is listed for it, and what an amendment would involve.

• Address: Town of Ajax, 65 Harwood Avenue South, Ajax, ON L1S 2H9
• Phone: 905-619-2529
• Email: [email protected]
• Online: the Town's official plan, zoning and land use page carries the full consolidated by-law and the zoning maps

Complaints, noise and enforcement

By-law Services handle zoning enforcement, noise, nuisance and property standards, and this is also the office a neighbour would call about you.

• Phone: 365-282-6100
• Email: [email protected]
• Online complaints: through the HeyJax portal, linked from the Town's by-law services page
• Remember: anonymous complaints aren't accepted, in either direction

Municipal Accommodation Tax

• Email: [email protected], which is also the address for e-transfer payments and for the quarterly remittance form
• Forms and FAQs: the Town's business licences, permits and taxes page

General enquiries and the Clerk's office

• Town Hall: 65 Harwood Ave. S., Ajax, Ontario L1S 2H9, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Main line: 905-683-4550. TTY: 1-866-460-4489. Email: [email protected]
• Clerk, for by-law copies and appeal records: [email protected]

For HST registration and anything touching section 67.7, your counterparty is the Canada Revenue Agency rather than anyone in Ajax. I'd take the deduction question to an accountant who has already applied section 67.7 to a client, because it's new enough that plenty of them haven't.

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

Enforcement being complaint-driven means host sentiment usually tells you more than the by-law does. In Ajax's case I have to be honest about the limits of what I could read.

Reddit blocks automated access, so I haven't read its Ajax threads and I won't characterise them as though I had. On BiggerPockets I found no Ajax-specific discussion I could open and verify either. Treat anyone who quotes Ajax host sentiment with real confidence as someone who managed something I couldn't.

What I can tell you is that most of what's written about Ajax online is now wrong, and confidently so. Summaries published in 2026 still describe Ajax as an unregulated market with no accommodation tax and no principal residence rule.

The tax has been in force since April 1, 2025, and the principal residence rule since June 22, 2026.

That gap is the single most expensive thing a new Ajax host can inherit from a search result, because both of the things it gets wrong carry penalties.

The Town's own record fills in the rest. Council framed the whole exercise around housing supply, opening its January 2025 motion with the observation that "a rise of short-term rental (STR) properties can have an impact on the availability of long-term rental housing options". That's not a council looking for a way to grow the sector. It's a council looking for a way to cap it at the point where hosting stops competing with tenants.

Ajax's Official Plan is under review as well, with open houses running through 2026, so the policy layer above the zoning by-law is still moving. The Official Plan currently allows bed and breakfast establishments in any ground-oriented housing form where residential uses are permitted, which is broader than the zoning by-law's detached-only rule, and that kind of gap is usually what a review closes.

If you're weighing Ajax against other Canadian options, the Canada market numbers are worth putting beside the compliance picture before you commit. It's worth modelling the same address through BNBCalc at 180 nights and again as a furnished mid-term rental, because in a principal residence market the comparison you actually need is against the spare bedroom you already own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a licence to run an Airbnb in Ajax?

No. The Town of Ajax issues no short-term rental licence, permit or registration, and its published list of by-law forms and licensing applications has no accommodation category beyond a Lodging House licence. That isn't a free pass, though. Since June 22, 2026, Section 4.28 of Ajax's zoning by-law has required a short-term rental to be the operator's principal residence, capped it at 180 days a year, and limited any single stay to 28 consecutive days.

Can you run an Airbnb in Ajax on an investment property?

No. Section 4.28 of the Ajax zoning by-law requires the dwelling to be the principal residence of the operator, using the Income Tax Act definition, so a second home or a rental unit you don't live in doesn't qualify for nightly stays. Renting a property you don't occupy for stays under 90 days also makes it a non-compliant short-term rental under section 67.7 of the federal Income Tax Act, which denies the expense deductions for those days.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in Ajax?

Three layers. Ajax's Municipal Accommodation Tax is 5% of the purchase price on stays of 28 consecutive days or less, in force since April 1, 2025. Airbnb and Vrbo don't collect it in Ajax, so the host adds it, shows it as a separate line and remits it quarterly. HST is 13% in Ontario, collected by the platform where the host isn't GST/HST registered. Rental income is then taxable at your marginal rate.

Which Ajax zones allow short-term rentals?

Short-term rental is listed as a permitted use in R1-A, R1-B, R1-C, R1-D, R1-E, R1-F, R2-A, R2-B, R3, RM4, RM5 and RM6, which covers effectively all of Ajax's urban residential housing stock, from detached houses to apartments. It is not permitted in the two Country Residential zones, CR-A and CR-B. A bed and breakfast, meaning up to three rooms with the host living on site, is permitted in the Country Residential and R1 and R2 zones, in a detached dwelling only.

What are the penalties for breaking Ajax's short-term rental rules?

Contravening a zoning by-law passed under section 34 of the Ontario Planning Act carries a fine of up to $25,000 on a first conviction and up to $10,000 for each day it continues, rising to $50,000 and $25,000 a day for a corporation. Failing to remit Ajax's Municipal Accommodation Tax carries $300 to $50,000 on a first conviction, plus interest at 1.25% a month and a possible lien on the property.

When a town finally writes short-term rentals into its zoning by-law, it's usually deciding which half of the market it wants rather than opening the whole thing up, and in Ajax that half is people who already live there. So wherever you're buying, spend your reading time on the conditions attached to the permission. The permission itself is always the easy part to find.

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