Airbnb taxes in Costa Rica: the 2026 guide for foreign hosts

A note on the words

Some terms below stay in Spanish on purpose. CABYS, TRIBU-CR, factura electrónica de compra and NITE are not translations we can improve on: they are the names printed on the forms and screens you are going to deal with. Translating them would leave you unable to find them. Each one is explained the first time it appears.

If you are not Costa Rican or a resident

Start here, because everything else waits on it. To register as a taxpayer you need a Costa Rican identification number, and there are three kinds:

The NITE (Número de Identificación Tributaria Especial) is free and is requested from the tax authority. It is not residency, it does not give you the right to work, and it does not make you a resident for any other purpose — it is a number so the system can identify you.

The five steps, in the order that saves you a trip

Step 1 is the one that gets skipped, because it is not a tax matter and nothing in the tax system reminds you of it. Law 9742 requires lodging offered through digital platforms to be registered with the Tourism Board before the service is provided. It is free and done online.

Step 4 produces two things you will need for any invoicing software, Ticuenta included: a cryptographic certificate that signs your documents, and a username and password your software uses to talk to the tax authority. They are not the same as your login to the tax portal.

The numbers, on one real stay

This is the question nobody answers with figures: of what the guest pays, how much is yours? Take a stay the guest pays ₡100,000 for — roughly US$ 220 — with an Airbnb service fee of ₡13,000.

So the honest number is about 60 %, not the 85 % people assume when they subtract the platform fee and stop there. Two of the lines above surprise almost everybody — the VAT, because it feels like income when it lands in your account, and the remittance tax, because almost nobody has heard of it.

1 · Invoicing the stay

Short-term rental is a service, and it carries an electronic invoice. A foreign guest, a booking that came through a platform and money arriving from abroad change nothing: the service happens in Costa Rica.

The document is not a PDF. It is an XML file with a fixed structure, digitally signed, sent to the tax authority and either accepted or rejected by it. The PDF you hand your guest is a representation of that file, not the document itself. Each line carries a CABYS code — a thirteen-digit product code that determines the VAT rate — and the nights as the quantity.

Does your price include the tax?

It depends on the platform and how you have it configured. If the amount you are paid already has the tax inside, you work it out backwards; if not, you add it on top. Airbnb does not add Costa Rican VAT to your nightly price, so in practice the price you publish has to include it.

If your guest gives you an identification number, the invoice goes out in their name; if they are a foreigner without one, with their passport; if they give you nothing, it goes out as a tiquete electrónico, a simplified receipt. The VAT is the same in all three cases.

2 · Airbnb's service fee: its VAT and its withholding

Airbnb does not bill you: it deducts. Each payout arrives net, and your payments dashboard shows the service fee the platform kept — usually 3 % when the guest pays their own share, or around 15 % if you chose to carry the whole fee yourself. That fee is an expense of yours, paid to a company abroad, and it drags three things along with it.

Its VAT: Airbnb is registered here

This is the big difference with Booking. Airbnb is registered with the Costa Rican tax authority as a cross-border digital service provider and, since 1 June 2023, charges the 13 % VAT on its own service fee to Costa Rican users and remits it itself. That is why the fee appears in your booking breakdown with its VAT shown separately.

• Do not self-assess it again. The reverse-charge mechanism is for foreign suppliers that are not registered. With Airbnb the tax has already been charged and paid by the platform; adding it again in your return means paying it twice.
• But it is your credit. Because your rental activity is taxable, the 13 % Airbnb charged on its fee is input VAT in your business. The document Airbnb publishes for the fee is what supports it.
• You still need the purchase invoice, not for the VAT but for the cost: it is the Costa Rican document that puts the fee into your books. One a month, from the breakdown Airbnb publishes.

That last point deserves a name, because it is a genuine oddity of the Costa Rican system: the factura electrónica de compra, a purchase invoice issued by the buyer. It exists precisely for suppliers who cannot issue a Costa Rican document — a company abroad, for instance. You issue it to yourself, in Airbnb's name, for the fee they charged you.

The remittance tax nobody mentions

When someone in Costa Rica pays a foreign company for a service used here, the law requires withholding part of that payment and remitting it to the tax authority. For fees and commissions the rate is 25 %. The tax authority confirmed this applies to lodging platforms' intermediation commissions, and Airbnb's service fee is exactly that.

Since Airbnb deducts its own fee, there is nothing left to withhold from: the money is already gone. The tax still exists, and you absorb it. Under the prudent reading — the one the tax authority applies when the payer takes on the supplier's tax — what Airbnb received is treated as 75 % net, so the withholding works out to a third of the fee.

• When it is filed. Monthly, within the first fifteen calendar days of the following month.
• Even under the flat regime. The withholding is a tax on what Airbnb earns, not on what you earn. That your regime does not let you deduct the fee changes nothing about having to remit it.
• No withholding, no deduction. If you are on the profits regime, the fee is only a deductible expense if the withholding was made.

From Ticuenta: the purchase invoices for Airbnb's fees are generated from the monthly file the platform publishes, with the VAT exactly as Airbnb charges it. That credit is already in your VAT return draft, and the remittance tax is worked out for the month. See pricing

3 · Declaring the rental income

There are two regimes, and the choice matters more than it looks.

For most foreign owners with one or two properties, the default regime wins on simplicity. The profits regime starts to pay off when real expenses clearly exceed 15 % of income — and it requires an employee on the payroll, which is a bigger commitment than it sounds.

The calendar

What Airbnb tells the tax authority about you

Since 1 January 2025, every platform that lists or collects payment for short-term rentals in Costa Rica has to verify who each host is and report it once a year, by 30 April. The first report, covering 2025, was filed in April 2026. What Airbnb sends about you:

• Name, identification, date of birth and address.
• Your Costa Rican tax ID, if you gave them one — which is why Airbnb asks for it in your payout profile.
• The address of each listing.
• What you were paid, quarter by quarter, and how many bookings.
• Whose name the bank account receiving the money is in.
• The fees and taxes the platform charged or withheld.

This is not a new obligation for you — it is information. But it changes the picture: the tax authority can now line up what Airbnb reports against what you declared, and against the account the money landed in. For anyone who never declared, the exposure is concrete: 12.75 % of everything collected for the years still open, plus interest, plus a penalty that starts at 50 % of the unpaid tax. The rule comes from Costa Rica's commitments to the OECD, not from any one platform — Booking and the rest report the same.

If you also list on Booking

One registration, one VAT return and one income tax return cover everything. What changes is the commission, and Booking works the opposite way round:

• Booking invoices you monthly and you pay that invoice, instead of having the fee deducted.
• Booking is not registered with the Costa Rican tax authority, so its invoice has no Costa Rican VAT on it. That does not mean there is no VAT: it means you declare it, as output and as input in the same return, netting to zero.
• The 25 % remittance tax applies the same way, and again comes out of your pocket.

Direct bookings are the easiest to forget. No statement arrives to remind you, and they carry the same invoice with the same VAT as the rest.

The mistakes that repeat

• Invoicing what Airbnb deposited

  The payout arrives net, with the fee already taken out. The invoice to the guest is for what the guest paid for the stay; the fee is a separate transaction.

• Subtracting 13 % instead of dividing by 1.13

  On ₡100,000 with the tax inside, the base is ₡88,496 and not ₡87,000. The shortcut hands over more VAT than you owe, on every single stay.

• Self-assessing VAT on Airbnb's fee

  Airbnb already charged and paid it — it has been registered since 2023. Adding it again means paying twice. What you should do is take it as a credit.

• Assuming the fee carries no withholding

  It carries 25 %, and because Airbnb collects its own fee, the host absorbs it. It is the most commonly omitted tax in the business.

• Treating a booking as income

  A booking is not a sale. It becomes one when the stay is paid for. A cancellation with a refund is not invoiced; a cancellation you keep the money on, is.

Quick answers

My guest is foreign and paid through the platform. Do I still invoice?

Yes. The service takes place in Costa Rica, and that is what decides it. Where the guest is from and where the money came from do not change the obligation.

Doesn't Airbnb already collect the VAT for me?

It collects the VAT on its own service fee, because it has been registered here since June 2023. The VAT on the stay — the 13 % on what the guest pays to sleep in your house — is yours: you invoice it and you declare it. Airbnb does not add it to your price and does not remit it.

Can I deduct the platform fee from what I declare?

Not under the default regime. There, the flat 15 % deduction replaces every real expense, the fee included. You still have to document the fee with the purchase invoice — documenting a cost and deducting it are different things.

I had no guests this month. Do I file a zero return?

For rental income, no: months without income are not filed. For VAT, yes — that return goes in every month regardless.

Do I need a municipal licence?

It depends on the canton. Some municipalities charge a licence for rentals and others do not, and the criteria differ. It is worth asking yours directly before assuming either way.

Can I do all this from abroad?

Yes. The registration, the certificate, the invoicing and the filings are all online. What you cannot do from abroad is skip them.

The short version

• Tourism Board registration before you operate; tax registration before you collect.
• Every stay invoiced electronically with 13 % VAT, on what the guest paid — divide by 1.13, never subtract 13 %.
• Airbnb's fee documented with a purchase invoice you issue yourself; its VAT is a credit, not something to self-assess.
• 25 % remittance tax on that fee, monthly, out of your own pocket.
• Income tax at 12.75 % of gross under the default regime, filed in months with income.
• Airbnb reports your income, bookings and bank account to the tax authority every 30 April.
• Of what the guest pays, roughly 60 % is yours before running costs.

About this guide. Airbnb's registration and its VAT on service fees from 1 June 2023 were announced by the platform itself; the remittance tax comes from articles 53 to 59 of the Income Tax Act and from official ruling DGT-831-2021; the annual reporting by platforms, from resolution MH-DGT-RES-0025-2024. The 25 % rate is the one for fees and commissions; some advisors apply the 30 % rate for “other remittances” to platform services, and that is a conversation to have with your accountant before your first filing. Examples use round exchange rates so the arithmetic can be followed; your invoice carries the Central Bank rate of the day.

Verified as of 24 September 2026. Tax rules change. This is information, not tax advice — confirm the current version before applying any of it to a real case.

Sources: Ministry of Finance Current legal texts (Sinalevi) Costa Rican Tourism Board

Also in English

• Booking.com taxes in Costa Rica: the 2026 guide for hosts
• The NITE: the tax ID a foreign host needs in Costa Rica
• Ticuenta for foreign owners: what it does and what it costs

Everything else on this site is in Spanish, including detailed guides on Airbnb, Booking and the NITE for foreign hosts.