Airbnb Taxes for HostsThe payout, opened in Dallas

A listing anywhere in the state, opened here

Both readings happen on a video call, with the payout file on the screen and the host at home. The practice is in Dallas. The deposit is set beside what the guest paid, and a hotel letter stays in the host's hands on that same call.

A host in Dallas or Fort Worth may feel the call is with a neighbor. Past those two cities the line we use is short. We are all Texans. The square the guests slept in is yours, and the person opening the file is still in Dallas.

Send the download from a Hill Country cabin, a Gulf beach house, or a Panhandle yard. The two readings keep their names. A Comptroller letter about the state hotel tax, or a city letter about the local layer, is opened only after the payout is on the table. Beside the federal nights a host may have two Texas figures: what the platform did or did not collect as state hotel tax, and, when the listing lives inside a company, the revenue a franchise report will read.

The picture on this page is an oblique view of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, photographed by Daniel Mayer and shared under CC BY-SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons as Texas State Capitol building-oblique view, cropped to the building for this host page.

What the Comptroller hotel FAQ says a short stay is

The Comptroller hotel FAQ, the page this practice read in the industry notes, says the state hotel tax is 6 percent of the cost of a room, and a host who treats a platform tax column as that whole answer is reading only one of the two papers this site is built around.

For that state tax, a hotel is a building where the public rents sleeping rooms for 15 dollars or more a day, so a listing priced under that line is a question to take to the FAQ before anyone types 6 percent onto a night that the page itself would leave out.

Local hotel taxes, the same FAQ says, apply to sleeping rooms of 2 dollars or more a day, and this page does not print a city's rate, because the FAQ's own example of stacked local rates is one city's example and a host in another city would be copying a fiction.

The state tax applies to meeting and banquet rooms inside a hotel, while local hotel taxes are due only on rooms ordinarily used for sleeping, which is why a host who also rents the dining room for a gathering keeps that charge in its own column instead of folding it into the guest-night total.

A short-term rental, under Tax Code section 156.001(b) as that FAQ states it, is a rental of all or part of a residence to someone who is not a permanent resident, for 29 days or less, and a stay that runs longer than that line is not something this page will rename by guessing.

The hotel page this practice cites for the monthly rhythm names Tax Code chapter 156 for the state tax, chapter 351 for a municipal tax, and chapter 352 for a county tax, and the monthly report on that page is due on the 20th.

The platform column and the report the owner still files

A platform that agrees to collect the state tax does so and files Form AP-102, and the host's job on those stays is to keep the download that shows the column, not to type the same tax a second time into a report the platform already owns.

If the platform has not agreed, the owner collects and remits, and the payout file's missing tax column is the clue that the state report is still the owner's paper.

An owner who rents only through a collecting platform does not collect the state tax on those stays, and still checks the city and the county for local hotel tax, because the FAQ draws that line in one sentence and a help-center article does not erase it.

Stays booked on the owner's own site stay with the owner, even in a month when every other night arrived through a platform that files AP-102, so the own-site nights need their own column before the 20th.

A city rate is looked up for the listing's city on the day the report is prepared. This page will not memorize one. The number that belongs in the local column is the number on your letter or on the locator for that city, and a rate copied from a friend's town is how a host pays the wrong office.

When the listing sits inside a company

A host who invoices under a personal name, with no company ever formed, is generally outside the franchise tax, and the hotel report above is the Texas paper that remains, while a listing dropped into a limited liability company is a different stack.

Before a host treats the payout total as the company report, Publication 98-806 is the Comptroller account this practice checked on 4 October 2026, and the entities it lists as filers include corporations, one-owner and series limited liability companies, partnerships, trusts, banks, S corporations, professional associations, and joint ventures.

When that publication needs examples of doing business in Texas it points at Rule 3.586, and a cabin rented to guests who live in another state can be one of those examples even if the host never walks into a Comptroller office.

Margin still begins with federal revenue after the exclusions in Tax Code 171.1011, so a loan you parked in the listing account, or cash you paid yourself and called an expense, will warp the figure the franchise report reads if the payout file is copied without those two questions.

A host company picks one margin path and stays with it for the combined group it belongs to, and the four paths Publication 98-806 names are seventy percent of total revenue, total revenue after goods-cost, total revenue after compensation, and total revenue after the one-million-dollar subtraction that has been available since the start of 2014, chosen only when the payout rows can carry the path.

Cost of goods for that report is what was spent to acquire or produce tangible goods and real property sold in the ordinary course, and a host who only provides a place to sleep will often leave that column blank, with the exceptions staying in section 171.1012 rather than in a blog.

Compensation on that report counts W-2 pay, cash to officers, directors, owners, partners, and employees, and net distributive income to a human owner, each up to the year's cap, plus deductible benefits such as health, retirement, and workers' compensation, while 1099 labor and the employer share of payroll taxes stay outside, and the margin is then apportioned on Texas gross receipts.

The caps the franchise home page prints are 480,000 dollars for 2026 and 2027 and 450,000 dollars for 2024 and 2025, and a host sentence about a 2026 report does not paste the earlier cap into it.

The year the company owes no tax and still files

A host company whose annualized total revenue for 2026 or 2027 sits at or under 2,650,000 dollars owes no franchise tax and sends no tax report, and it still sends Form 05-102 or Form 05-167 unless the Comptroller skip list names it, while the matching line for 2024 and 2025 is 2,470,000 dollars.

Skipping that short report can take away the company's right to sue or defend and can leave officers, directors, partners, members, and owners exposed, which is the warning the Comptroller ties to sections 171.251, 171.2515, 171.252, and 171.255, with financial institutions kept apart under 171.259 and 171.260.

When no tax is due, a combined-group member that is organized in Texas or has nexus still sends its own information report, Form 05-167 keeps ownership confidential, Form 05-102 is signed by an officer or someone authorized, a registered-agent change goes to the Secretary of State rather than onto those reports, and an officer change waits for the next annual report unless an amendment is required for an error or a critical need.

Name the report year beside the rate, because the Comptroller home page prints 0.375 percent for a retail or wholesale business and 0.75 percent for other businesses, and the EZ path at 0.331 percent is open when annualized total revenue is 20 million dollars or under for the entity or the combined group, a choice that gives up margin deductions, while the long form is the one for a company over the no-tax line that skips EZ or that will take a margin deduction.

May 15 beside the hotel 20th

Put the franchise report on the host calendar at May 15, and when that date is a weekend or a holiday the Comptroller due-date page for the year is where the next business day is read, not a memory of last spring.

More days on that report are available only when the payment, or the Comptroller's own form, arrives by the original due day, and the payment has to be all of last year's tax or ninety percent of this year's, with a company that first became taxable in the prior year barred from leaning on all of last year for its first annual report.

A host company that is not on electronic funds transfer asks for the extra time through Webfile or Form 05-164 and the extended day is November 15, while 10,000 dollars or more paid in the previous state fiscal year puts the company on electronic funds transfer with a first extended day of August 15 and a further day of November 15, and at 500,000 dollars or more the extension is a timely TEXNET payment under code 13080 without also sending Form 05-164, a final report falling within 60 days after sufficient nexus ends and a final-report extension running 45 days past that original final due day when those payment rules are met.

File the franchise report late and the host company meets a 50 dollar penalty, then 5 percent of the tax from the first day through day 30, then 10 percent after day 30, with interest starting on day 61 at the percent the Comptroller interest page is showing that quarter, a percent this page leaves unread because it moves.

The state hotel report keeps its own day, the 20th of the month after the stays, and that day does not slide just because May 15 is also written on the kitchen calendar. A host company that owes both writes both next to the federal estimate vouchers in April, June, September, and January.

What we will read with you, and what we will not sign

The hour is better spent on the row that makes the payout match the bank, so the hotel report and any franchise report can be read from that match, than on polishing a guest-total cell in the hope an envelope goes quiet.

When a hotel assessment needs a protest, or a suit over that assessment needs a lawyer, the host takes that fight to the lawyer. An audit opinion, a review, or a compilation a lender wants signed stays with a firm allowed to sign it. Those signed papers are different documents from the hotel report and from the franchise report.

Reading the payout beside the deposit, preparing the federal return those nights support, and preparing the state hotel report when the platform did not collect it are jobs this practice can do with you. A paid preparer of a federal return still needs a preparer tax identification number for that federal return. Steven Palmieri does this reading in the Tax CFO role, the same role the first screen names as the Entrepreneur's CFO, and the page that draws the signing boundary is the disclosures page.

If the deposit and the guest total refuse to agree, or a hotel letter is already open on the counter, that is the month to bring. On the call the first column we touch is the payout, and a profit figure waits until that column agrees with the bank, which is the order a host in any state gets. The federal night tests, including the residence count in section 280A, do not change because the listing is in Texas. They live on the other pages of this site. This page is the one that holds May 15 and the 20th.

A constructed example, not a client's year: a host company whose revenue sits under the 2026 no-tax line of 2,650,000 dollars sends the information report and does not send the franchise tax report, and the nights that ran through a platform already filing Form AP-102 stay out of a second state hotel remittance, while nights the host booked directly stay in. The file we read is the one with that host's rows.

Name the host month that will not match