St. Cloud, Florida Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in St. Cloud, Florida and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the honest answer turns entirely on how your lot is zoned, and unfortunately, for the overwhelming majority of St. Cloud addresses it comes out as no. The city sits inside Osceola County, about half an hour southeast of the theme park corridor, and while unincorporated Osceola County runs a real short-term rental program with a published list of approved subdivisions, the city inside those county boundaries does not.

St. Cloud never wrote a ban, mind you. It wrote a zoning answer that lands in much the same place, because the Land Development Code defines a short-term rental and then lists that use in exactly one table, the schedule of permitted uses in commercial districts, where it shows up as a conditional use in CBD-1 and CBD-2 and nowhere else. Each residential district opens with the sentence "Only the following uses are permitted in this zoning district," and short-term rental sits on none of those lists. City council re-adopted that commercial table on November 13, 2025 under Ordinance No. 2025-79, so this is current policy rather than a forgotten clause from an older code.

So let's walk through what that means for an owner in 2026: which districts can legally take a paying guest for under a month, what the conditional use hearing costs, the licenses the city and county and state each want from you, the three taxes stacked on every booking, and how the special magistrate handles a rental caught without paperwork. Everything below comes from St. Cloud's own code or from the agencies that administer the rest, read in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so. Before you commit money here, run the property through BNBCalc on a 30-night minimum, because that's the calendar most owners in this city end up with.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in St. Cloud, Florida?

That 30-night figure isn't arbitrary, since it's the exact line the city's own definitions draw. Section 8.2.2 of the Land Development Code defines a short-term rental as "any dwelling or portion thereof that is available for use or is used for accommodations or lodging of guests paying a fee or other compensation for a period of less than 30 consecutive days." So let someone stay 30 nights and you sit outside that definition, whereas 29 nights puts you inside it, whatever the listing happens to be called.

The same section defines two neighboring uses that matter, because St. Cloud treats them as separate animals with separate rules. A transient lodging establishment is any unit or building "rented more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 days or one calendar month, whichever is less," or advertised as regularly rented to transients. That's the classic vacation-rental shape. A bed and breakfast establishment is narrower still, meaning an owner-occupied house, or part of one, with no more than 15 sleeping rooms. Hotels, motels, motor lodges and tourist courts are one synonymous term.

Where each of those can go is the whole story, and the commercial use table answers it in a single row apiece. Anything carrying neither a "P" nor a "C" in a district's column is, in the code's own words, "considered prohibited."

Use	Where it's allowed	How
Short-term rental (residential)	CBD-1, CBD-2	Conditional use
Transient lodging establishments	HB, CBD-1, CBD-2	Conditional use
Bed and breakfast establishments	HB, CBD-1, CBD-2	Permitted by right
Hotels, motels, motor lodges, tourist courts	EC, HB, CBD-1, CBD-2	Permitted by right

So what are CBD-1 and CBD-2? Downtown, and nothing else. The code describes CBD-1 as "the historical six block downtown business area" while CBD-2 covers "the balance of the central business district," and both may only be assigned where the city's future land use map already shows commercial. HB, meanwhile, is the Highway Business district out along the arterials. None of that describes a house on a cul-de-sac.

Turn to the residential zoning districts and the answer gets blunter, since R-E, R-1, R-1A, R-1B, R-2, R-2A, R-3, R-4 and the two manufactured home districts each publish a closed list of primary uses. Going through all of them, I found no rental, lodging, hotel, motel, bed and breakfast or tourist use anywhere in the article. Houses, ADUs, day care homes, churches, fire stations. That's the register.

Three doors owners usually try next are shut too, and it's worth knowing why before you spend money testing them:

• The "similar use" route. Section 3.3.1.B.3 lets the city manager admit an unlisted use with similar characteristics, but only "if that use is not listed elsewhere in another zoning district in the city." Short-term rental is listed elsewhere, in CBD-1 and CBD-2, so that discretion can't reach it.
• Accessory dwelling units. The ADU standards are generous on size and setbacks, yet section 3.14.30 closes with a sentence that leaves no room: "Nothing herein shall authorize or permit rental or leasing of the primary structure or ADU as a short-term rental (30 consecutive days or less)."
• Planned unit developments. Kissimmee has a short-term rental overlay and unincorporated Osceola has approved subdivisions, so people reasonably assume St. Cloud built something similar. It didn't. The PUD district's conditional uses are home occupations and major alcoholic beverage establishments, full stop, while a commercial PUD can carry hotels, motels and timeshares but not a residential short-term rental.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Cloud

Unfortunately for most people reading this, that closed list is the business plan gone. Buying a three-bedroom in a St. Cloud subdivision, furnishing it and listing it for weekend stays isn't a use the zoning recognizes, and no fee, permit or LLC structure converts it into one, which means the realistic question stops being "how do I get licensed" and becomes "which of three narrower models can my property support."

So start with the first of the three, a short-term rental as a conditional use downtown. That needs a property in CBD-1 or CBD-2, a conditional use application, a public hearing before the planning commission and a decision by city council. Downtown St. Cloud is small, so the qualifying inventory is small too, and conditions attached at approval can reshape the operation.

The second is a transient lodging establishment. That one's a conditional use in HB, CBD-1 and CBD-2, and section 3.14.7 sets out what the planning commission weighs. Two of its findings do most of the filtering. The property "shall have direct access to an arterial street," and the use has to sit on a site "physically separate from permanent residential uses by recreational amenities, major collector or arterial roadways, or open space." Then no part of an approved project can run as transient unless all of it does, which rules out carving a few nightly units out of an otherwise residential development.

The third is a bed and breakfast, which is the only one of the three that can reach a house in a neighborhood. Section 3.13.2 allows one in the districts named above, and then in any building inside the Downtown Historic Preservation District perimeter whatever the underlying zoning says, and in the area south of Lake Shore Boulevard, east of Dakota Avenue, west of Eastern Avenue and north of 9th Street.

The trade is that you have to live there. At least one owner has to live in the house, a guest can stay no more than 30 consecutive days and no more than 60 days in any one-year period, nobody may cook in a guest bedroom, and the owner keeps a running guest register showing names, home addresses, dates of occupancy and vehicle plates. Parking is then one off-street space per guest bedroom plus two for the owner, while every guest bedroom draws mobility fees at the lodging room rate.

Assuming none of those three fits, then the remaining option is the one plenty of Osceola owners have already taken, which is to rent for 30 nights or more and step outside the short-term rental definition entirely. You'll still need a Landlord Business Tax Receipt under section 40-162, which requires any owner renting property inside city limits to hold one, though the zoning problem disappears and so does the tourist tax.

One check comes before all of this, mind you, and it costs nothing. Make sure you're genuinely inside St. Cloud city limits, because a "St. Cloud, FL" mailing address proves nothing on its own. The city's own business tax receipt process opens with exactly that check, and its code enforcement minutes routinely list city cases at Kissimmee postal addresses. Properties on the unincorporated side answer to the county instead, which is a different rulebook and worth reading in our Osceola County short-term rental guide.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in St. Cloud

Since that zoning question decides everything else, the licensing sequence then runs in a fixed order, and starting in the wrong place wastes time and money. There's no short-term rental registration here, no STR permit and no city rental registry. What exists is a zoning approval, then a business tax receipt, then the state license behind both.

Start with the zoning approval, assuming your property is one of the few that can get one. A conditional use goes first to the planning commission, which under section 1.3.3 is "empowered to hear all conditional uses" and then recommends to city council, and council renders the decision, with the alternatives running from approval with conditions through to denial without prejudice.

Costs at that stage are published. The city's Community Development fee schedule, in force since June 2023 and still the current sheet as of July 2026, prices a conditional use at $900, plus any consultant cost the city passes through and an extra 5% for building review. A standard zoning verification letter runs $100, or $300 for a custom one turned around in five business days, and it's the cheapest way to get the city's written answer on your address.

Next comes the city license, which is two documents rather than one. Under section 40-132 nobody may manage any business in the city without first procuring a local business tax receipt, and section 12-132 adds a Certificate of Use, which the city won't issue until a new business inspection finds the premises compliant. The application itself gates on zoning, since section 40-133 requires that "the physical location being approved for proper zoning classification must be an actual street address." Let an application stall and it expires 60 days after the city received it. Both documents then expire on September 30 every year no matter when you got them, invoices go out in July, and the city sells the following year's receipts from July 1.

Behind the city sits the state, and it goes first even though most owners think about it last. Section 40-161 says St. Cloud "shall not issue a local business tax receipt to any business coming under the provisions of F.S. ch. 509" until the Division of Hotels and Restaurants has licensed it, and section 40-151 repeats the point for any state-regulated occupation. Per the division's lodging fee schedule, a single-unit vacation rental license costs $170 for a full year or $90 for a half year as of July 2026, plus a $50 application fee on a new license and a $10 Hospitality Education Program fee that isn't prorated.

Then there's the county, which sits alongside the city rather than above it. Osceola County's local business tax receipt costs $30 for a twelve-month receipt taken out between October 1 and March 31, $15 for six months from April 1, or $45 for eighteen months from July 1, renewing at $30 each July through September. The tax collector states the rule plainly, that a business inside Kissimmee or St. Cloud city limits needs both a city receipt and a county one. Approval runs 7 to 10 business days, so don't leave it to the week before a booking.

Miss any of it and the city starts charging you for the privilege.

Section 40-136 adds a penalty of 25% of the business tax due for operating without a receipt, on top of civil actions, court costs, attorney's fees and up to $250. Section 40-138 then stacks a delinquency penalty of 10% in October plus 5% for each later month, capped at 25%, with a further $250 once you're 150 days past the initial notice.

One figure I couldn't pin down is worth flagging. St. Cloud's own business tax amounts are set by council resolution rather than printed in the code, and the "fee schedule" link on the city's business tax FAQ page doesn't resolve to a document. Rather than publish a number I haven't read, I'd call the licensing desk on 407-957-7284 and ask for the current landlord and lodging rates.

Required Documents for St. Cloud Short-Term Rentals

Since that licensing chain only moves at the speed of its slowest piece of paper, it pays to assemble everything before you file the first form. The list splits by which counter you're standing at, so take them one at a time.

For a conditional use, section 3.14.7 asks for two submittals at application, and the first is a conceptual plan drawn to scale showing lot sizes, unit locations, existing structures and uses, amenities, the relationship to existing streets and any buffers. The second is a written statement of the method of ownership and management, and that one catches people off guard, because the city wants to know who runs the property day to day rather than only who owns it.

For the business tax receipt and Certificate of Use, gather:

• The completed application, on the city's form, for the right category. Rental property goes on the Landlord Business Tax Receipt application, which asks you to classify each address as ADU attached, ADU detached, commercial, duplex, single family or other.
• Your Social Security number or FEIN, which Florida Statutes § 205.0535(5) requires the city to collect.
• Proof of ownership from the property appraiser.
• Your active state license, since section 40-151 bars the city from issuing a receipt without you exhibiting it.
• A notarized property owner affidavit where the applicant isn't the owner. Under section 12-132(c) that affidavit puts the owner on notice that they carry the code enforcement exposure for their tenant's business.

For the taxes you'll register twice, once with the Florida Department of Revenue as a dealer collecting sales tax, and once with the Osceola County Tax Collector for tourist development tax, which carries a $5 application fee on the county's return form. A bed and breakfast adds its own running record on top, that current guest register of names, permanent addresses, dates of occupancy and vehicle plates.

St. Cloud Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all of that and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax to deal with, and Osceola County handles it differently from most of Florida. Three charges land on a stay of six months or less, and they don't all go to the same place.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Florida transient rental (sales) tax	6%	Florida Department of Revenue
Osceola discretionary sales surtax	1.5%	Florida Department of Revenue
Osceola tourist development tax	6%	Osceola County Tax Collector
Total	13.5%	all three, separately

The county's own substitute tourist development tax return confirms that arithmetic from the other direction, telling filers to report gross receipts "excluding the 7.5% State of Florida Sales Tax and the 6% Osceola County Tourist Development Tax."

Now the part that catches nearly every new Osceola host, and it's the most expensive assumption you can make here. Airbnb does not collect Osceola County's 6% tourist development tax. The county says so on its tourist development tax page in capital letters, that it "is NOT CONTRACTED with Airbnb, VRBO, Evolve, or any other third-party booking platforms," and Airbnb's own Florida occupancy tax article lists the counties whose tourist tax it does collect, with Osceola absent from that list. So Airbnb handles the 6% state tax and the surtax, while the 6% county tax is yours to charge the guest and send in yourself, every month.

That return is due by the 20th of the month following collection, and the county attaches real consequences to missing it. File on time and you keep a 2.5% collection allowance, capped at $30. File late and the penalty is 10% of the tax due or $50, whichever is greater, never less than $50, which means a late return reporting zero revenue still costs you $50.

Interest then runs on a floating rate the county publishes annually, printed on the return itself at 11% for calendar 2026, down from 12% the year before, and payment goes to Bruce Vickers, Tax Collector, PO Box 422105, Kissimmee, FL 34742-2105.

The state side is more familiar. Florida charges 6% on any stay of six months or less, returns are due on the 1st and late after the 20th of the following month, and marketplace providers have had to register and remit since July 1, 2021 under the Department of Revenue's sales and use tax rules. Florida imposes no personal income tax, so your rental profit meets a federal return and stops there.

Do check the whole stack against a real revenue number before you decide anything. Weighing a St. Cloud purchase against something in the vacation-home belt a few miles west? The Kissimmee market is where the comparable nightly rates and occupancy actually live, and the gap between a 30-night lease and a nightly calendar is usually the entire investment case.

Florida Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those tax layers are state-designed even where a county administers them, and the same goes for the framework sitting above St. Cloud's zoning. Florida preempted part of local authority here fifteen years ago, and the shape of that preemption explains how a city can still do what St. Cloud does.

Florida Statutes § 509.032(7)(b) says a local law "may not prohibit vacation rentals or regulate the duration or frequency of rental of vacation rentals." That's a real constraint, yet it arrives with a grandfather clause, because it doesn't apply to local laws adopted on or before June 1, 2011, which local governments may keep enforcing. Everything outside the ban-and-frequency axis stayed local anyway, so zoning, life safety, noise and building codes were never preempted at all.

Here I have to be straight with you about a limit in my own research. Whether St. Cloud's residential restriction sits inside that June 2011 grandfather depends on when the provision was first adopted, and I couldn't date it from the sources available to me. Municode's ordinance bank for the city returns only six ordinances mentioning short-term rentals, and the only one carrying the use table is Ordinance No. 2025-79 from November 2025, which re-enacted and renumbered the table rather than telling us what came before it. So the code reads the way I've described, the city administers it that way, and how it interacts with § 509.032(7)(b) is a question for a Florida land use attorney rather than a guide.

The state license, meanwhile, is neither optional nor local, since section 509.242 classifies a vacation rental as a condominium unit or a one-to-four-family dwelling that's also a transient public lodging establishment, and section 509.241 then requires every such establishment to hold a license from the Division of Hotels and Restaurants, renewed annually.

Two legislative points are worth carrying into 2026. First, Chapter 2025-113, formerly SB 606, took effect on July 1, 2025 and rewrote the test for what counts as transient: rented more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than 30 consecutive days, counted in consecutive days rather than calendar months. A stay is now presumed temporary unless a written lease says otherwise. Second, the big preemption expansion people still cite never became law, since SB 280 was vetoed on June 27, 2024 and HB 1537 was laid on the table that March, leaving the 2011 statute in charge. The 2026 water-safety bills for vacation rentals went the same way, with SB 658 dying in messages on March 13, 2026.

Rules vary enormously across the state, which is the point of checking your own city rather than a Florida-wide summary. Our Florida statewide guide maps the framework, while the Orange County guide covers the Orlando side of the metro, where the answer for an entire-home rental comes out differently.

Does St. Cloud Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Enforcement here looks nothing like the platform-level blocking that big cities use, so it's easy to underestimate. St. Cloud runs the ordinary Florida machinery, and that machinery is slow, complaint-driven and expensive at the end.

Section 2-261 gives the city a code enforcement special magistrate with all the powers of Florida Statutes chapter 162, which includes imposing fines that become liens on the property. The magistrate hears cases monthly at City Hall, and the docket, the clerk and the case numbers are all published, so anything brought against you becomes a public record.

The citation path has a shape worth understanding. Under section 2-284, an officer normally gives notice first and sets a correction period of no more than 30 days, then issues a citation only if the violation persists. Be aware of the exception, though, since no notice period is required where the violation is a repeat, or presents a serious threat to public health and safety, or is irreparable. Each day counts as a separate civil infraction, and the maximum civil penalty is $500 per violation plus court costs. Contest nothing and you pay the reduced penalty for the violation class, which section 2-287 sets at $25, $100, $200 or $500. Separately, section 1-15 allows a fine up to $500 or 60 days for any violation without its own penalty, again with each day a separate offence.

One protection cuts your way, and it's a genuine one. 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 a name and address on the complaint before anything starts, unless there's an imminent threat.

Now for what actually happens. Going through the special magistrate's published record for 2026, the case that matters most here is Case #2025-901, heard on June 17, 2026. There an owner and tenant were cited under city code sections 40-162 and 24-52(A) for, in the city's language, allowing "a rental property without a Landlord Business Tax Receipt." By then it had become a lien reduction, though, which means fines had already accrued and attached to the property.

So the landlord receipt requirement isn't decorative.

The magistrate isn't shy about the numbers either. In February 2026 he ordered that a fine of $1,000 per day accrue until compliance on a building safety case, plus $533.03 in administrative costs, and reserved the right to consider fines up to the statutory maximum on the longer deadline.

What I didn't find is any short-term rental case on the 2026 dockets I read, and the monthly agendas are thin. The August 19, 2026 agenda carried one new case, about accumulated rubbish. That reads to me like a small city working through neighborhood complaints rather than a task force hunting listings, so the real risk in St. Cloud is a neighbor who picks up the phone. Keep in mind that liens don't expire quietly, and a title search at sale finds every one of them.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in St. Cloud

Given how much of that turns on the zoning answer, the order below matters more than it looks. The early steps are cheap, and they tell you whether the later ones are worth attempting at all.

1. Confirm you're inside city limits. Ask Community Development, or pull a zoning verification letter for $100. A St. Cloud mailing address on the unincorporated side puts you under Osceola County's rules instead.
2. Get your zoning district in writing. Anything residential means a short-term rental isn't an available use, and the honest move is to stop here and model a 30-night minimum.
3. Pick the model your property can support. Downtown CBD-1 or CBD-2 for a short-term rental conditional use, HB or CBD for a transient lodging establishment, an owner-occupied house in the historic district or the Lake Shore Boulevard area for a bed and breakfast.
4. Book a pre-application meeting. The bed and breakfast rules recommend one outright, and for a conditional use it's the cheapest way to learn what conditions staff will recommend.
5. File the conditional use if one applies, budgeting $900 plus consultant costs, and expect a planning commission hearing followed by a city council decision.
6. Apply for the state vacation rental license, at $170 a year for a single unit plus the $50 application fee and $10 education fee, because the city can't issue your receipt until you exhibit it.
7. Apply for the city business tax receipt and Certificate of Use, with the owner affidavit if you're not the owner, then clear the new business inspection with the fire marshal.
8. Add the Osceola County business tax receipt, at $30 to $45 depending on when in the year you file, allowing 7 to 10 business days.
9. Register for both taxes. Florida Department of Revenue for the 6% state tax and 1.5% surtax, Osceola County Tax Collector for the 6% tourist development tax and its $5 application fee.
10. Diarize September 30 and the 20th of every month. The receipts expire on the first date and the county tourist tax return is due on the second, and remember that a late nil return still costs $50.

Who to Contact in St. Cloud about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Whichever of those steps you get stuck on, four offices handle nearly all of it, and knowing which one owns your question saves a lot of transferred calls.

Zoning, conditional uses and city limits

City of St. Cloud Community Development Department, at City Hall.

• Address: 1300 9th Street, St. Cloud, FL 34769 (Community Development is in Building A, 1st floor)
• Phone: 407-957-8427 for the department, 407-957-8422 for Planning and Zoning
• Email: [email protected], or [email protected] for development review
• Counter hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday
• Director: Jeffrey Ball, per the city staff directory

Business tax receipts and certificates of use

Same building, different desk. The licensing team answers on 407-957-7284 and [email protected], and the city runs applications and payments through its Community Development customer portal at etrakit.stcloud.org.

Code enforcement

Community Compliance Department, which is who a neighbor calls about you and who you call about a notice.

• Phone: 407-957-7238
• Email: [email protected]
• Supervisor: Christopher Elbon
• Special magistrate hearings: monthly at City Hall Council Chambers, 3:00 p.m.; clerk to the magistrate Claudia Klockars on 407-957-7484

Taxes and the state license

Three separate agencies, and none of them is the city:

• Osceola County Tax Collector for the business tax receipt and the 6% tourist development tax: 2501 E. Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, Kissimmee, FL 34744, mailing PO Box 422105, Kissimmee, FL 34742-2105, (407) 742-4000
• Florida Department of Revenue for the 6% state tax and the surtax: Taxpayer Assistance on 850-488-6800, Monday to Friday
• DBPR Division of Hotels and Restaurants for the vacation rental license: 2601 Blair Stone Road, Tallahassee, FL 32399-1011, 850-487-1395, [email protected]

What Do Airbnb Hosts in St. Cloud on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Those phone numbers get used more than you'd expect, because the published advice about this city is unusually bad and hosts find that out the expensive way. What follows is my read of the public discussion rather than a survey, and I should say plainly that none of it comes from Reddit, which blocks automated access and whose terms don't permit the commercial use a guide like this needs. The forum material below is BiggerPockets, read directly.

• Investors treat the whole Osceola question as a zoning problem first. In one BiggerPockets thread on short-term rentals around Orlando, the opening question is how to confirm during screening that a property is actually approved for short-term rental use, and the thread never produces a clean answer. That's the right instinct in this county, where the answer changes at a municipal boundary line.
• The "fall back to a long-term rental" plan gets challenged hard. The substantive reply in that same thread argues that homes in the established vacation-home submarkets are already priced as short-term rentals, so long-term rents won't carry the purchase price if the nightly model stops working. For a St. Cloud buyer that isn't hypothetical, since the 30-night model is the base case rather than the fallback.
• The market argument is about saturation, not regulation. A longer thread on Orlando and Kissimmee runs on listing counts, management quality and thin-reserve DSCR financing, with one poster putting listings at roughly 45,000 in 2019 against about 37,000 more recently. Nobody in it asks which municipalities permit the use, which is the gap this guide exists to fill.
• Several circulating St. Cloud summaries are simply wrong. I've seen published guidance claiming the city caps overnight guests, caps rental days per year and charges a short-term-rental impact fee, and reading the code section by section I found none of it. Remember that a confident summary is not a source, and the section numbers in older write-ups are stale anyway after the November 2025 renumbering.

The broader lesson travels well past St. Cloud, though. In any state that preempted the loud fight over bans, the real decision usually migrated somewhere quieter, into a use table, a definitions section, a single letter in a column. That's not where most buyers look, and it's where the answer usually is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in St. Cloud, Florida in 2026?

Only in narrow circumstances. St. Cloud's Land Development Code lists "short-term rental (residential)" as a conditional use in the CBD-1 and CBD-2 downtown districts and nowhere else, and the residential zoning districts publish closed lists of permitted uses that don't include it. Transient lodging establishments are a conditional use in Highway Business and the two downtown districts. Bed and breakfast establishments are permitted by right in those districts and in the downtown historic area, though the owner must live on site.

What zoning districts allow short-term rentals in St. Cloud?

CBD-1 and CBD-2, the two central business districts, and only as a conditional use requiring a planning commission hearing and a city council decision. CBD-1 covers the historical six-block downtown business area and CBD-2 the rest of the central business district. Transient lodging establishments add Highway Business to that list. Any use carrying neither a "P" nor a "C" in the commercial use table is treated as prohibited, and no residential district lists the use at all.

How much tax do you pay on a short-term rental in St. Cloud, Florida?

13.5% in total on stays of six months or less. That's 6% Florida transient rental tax plus a 1.5% Osceola County discretionary sales surtax, both remitted to the Florida Department of Revenue, plus a 6% Osceola County tourist development tax remitted to the Osceola County Tax Collector. The county return is due by the 20th of the following month, with a 2.5% collection allowance capped at $30 for on-time filing.

Does Airbnb collect Osceola County's tourist development tax?

No. Osceola County states on its own tourist tax pages and on its return form that it isn't contracted with Airbnb, Vrbo, Evolve or any other booking platform, and Osceola doesn't appear on Airbnb's list of Florida counties whose tourist development tax it collects. Airbnb collects the 6% state tax and the discretionary surtax. The 6% county tax is the host's to collect and remit directly, every month.

Can you rent a St. Cloud house for 30 days or more?

Yes, and for most owners here that's the workable model. The city defines a short-term rental as a stay of less than 30 consecutive days, so a 30-night minimum falls outside the definition, outside the conditional use requirement and outside the tourist development tax. You'll still need a Landlord Business Tax Receipt from the city under section 40-162, plus a county business tax receipt alongside it, since both are required for rental property inside city limits.

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