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The platform's commission: why you are the one who issues the invoice

Airbnb deducts it and Booking bills you for it, and neither sends you a Costa Rican document. For that cost to exist in your books it has to be issued from your side, with a purchase invoice.

7 min readTicuenta
In one sentence: Airbnb, Booking and the rest are abroad and cannot issue a Costa Rican electronic document. That is what the factura electrónica de compra is for — a purchase invoice issued by the buyer.

What a purchase invoice is

It is one of the seven document types in version 4.4, and it has one feature that sets it apart from all the others: it is issued by the buyer, not the seller. In the numbering it carries document type code 08.

It exists for exactly this situation: a supplier who is not required to — or simply cannot — issue an electronic document in Costa Rica, and a transaction that has to be documented anyway.

Why you need it

Because a cost with no document does not exist. If the platform keeps 15 % of every booking and that never appears in your books, that money left with nothing behind it. And there is no way to defend it if anyone asks.

It is one issuance a month per platform, and it is where people give up. Doing it by hand is tedious: pull the period's commission breakdown, convert it, issue. It gets done for two months and abandoned in the third.

The VAT on that commission: it depends on the platform

This is the part that does not have a one-line answer, and anyone giving you one is simplifying something that depends on which platform you are dealing with.

PlatformRegistered here?What you do with the VAT
Airbnb Yes, since 1 June 2023 Airbnb charges and remits it. You take it as a credit — you do not self-assess it
Booking No You self-assess the 13 %: output and input in the same return, netting to zero
Any other Check before assuming The rule follows the answer to the previous column

The general rule for foreign digital services is the reverse charge: when the supplier is not registered with the Costa Rican tax authority, the buyer declares the tax. When the supplier is registered, the supplier charges and remits it. That is the whole difference between the two rows above.

And the withholding, which is separate

Whichever platform it is, paying a commission to a company abroad triggers the remittance tax: 25 % for fees and commissions, filed monthly. Neither platform lets you withhold it from what you pay them, so in practice the host absorbs it. The arithmetic is in the Airbnb guide and the Booking guide.

Documenting is not the same as deducting

Two different things, worth not mixing up:

  • Documenting the cost is a duty, and it is done with the purchase invoice.
  • Deducting it depends on your income tax regime. Under property income, the commission is not deducted: that regime has a single flat 15 % deduction that replaces real expenses.
Issue the purchase invoice anyway. Even under a regime where that expense does not reduce your tax. Support and deductibility are different things, and the duty to document does not depend on whether it saves you money.

What you need to issue it

  • The foreign supplier's details. If the tax authority does not recognise their identification, there is a provision for that: not every supplier has a Costa Rican number.
  • The period's commission breakdown, which the platform itself publishes.
  • The currency and the exchange rate of the day, which goes inside the document.

Quick answers

One invoice per booking or one a month?

Grouping the period is the usual approach, because the platform settles by periods. What matters is that it reconciles with the statement the platform publishes.

Is the statement Airbnb sends me enough?

It works as support for the figures, but it is not a Costa Rican electronic document. The document is the purchase invoice you issue.

Does this apply to Vrbo and Expedia too?

The logic is the same for any foreign supplier. What changes between platforms is whether they are registered with the tax authority, which is exactly what has to be checked case by case.

From Ticuenta

The commission invoice, without typing it

Upload the monthly file the platform publishes and the purchase invoices come out together, each with its own reference — Airbnb with the VAT as it charges it, Booking self-assessed. It is the one that gets abandoned in month three.

See how it works

About this article. The purchase invoice and its type code come from the version 4.4 annex; the reverse charge, from article 4 of the VAT Act. Whether a given platform is registered is something that changes — Airbnb registered in 2023, Booking has not — and it is worth confirming before applying a rule from memory.

Verified as of 24 September 2026. Tax rules change. This is information, not tax advice.

Sources: Ministry of Finance Current legal texts (Sinalevi)

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