If you rent a Vienna apartment short-term — on Airbnb, on Booking.com, or directly — the City of Vienna expects a small slice of every booking to be paid as Ortstaxe, the tourism accommodation tax. The rules are clear once you know where to look, but most hosts learn them the hard way: a letter from MA 6 (Magistratsabteilung 6, the city's revenue office) two years into hosting, asking for back-payment with interest. This guide is everything I wish I had known when I started, written in plain English, with the relevant statute references so you can verify each claim against the original Austrian and Viennese law.
Disclaimer up front. I'm an Airbnb host in Vienna and a software founder, not a tax adviser. Everything below is general guidance based on the published statute and current City of Vienna documentation. For your specific case, especially if you have unusual exemption claims or run more than a small number of apartments, talk to an Austrian Steuerberater. The official authority for binding interpretation is the City of Vienna at wien.gv.at.
What the Ortstaxe is and where it comes from
The Wien Ortstaxe is a municipal tax levied on every paid overnight stay inside city limits. The legal basis is §12 of the Wiener Tourismusförderungsgesetz (WTFG) — the Tourism Promotion Act for the city of Vienna. The tax is collected by the host, calculated on the accommodation portion of each booking, and paid monthly to the city. The proceeds fund Vienna Tourism (the city's tourism marketing body) and broader tourism infrastructure.
It applies to every commercial overnight accommodation in Vienna: hotels, hostels, holiday apartments, Airbnb, Booking.com, direct bookings, your friend who paid you for the spare room. There is no exemption based on platform or scale. If you take money for a night, the city expects its cut on top.
How the rate changes in 2026 and 2027
This is the part most hosts haven't internalised yet. Vienna's Ortstaxe rate is being increased in two steps over the next 18 months. The rate that applies to a particular night is the rate in force on that night — not on the booking date, not on the check-in date.
| Period | Rate | Flat deduction | Effective factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Until 30 June 2026 (current) | 3.2% | 11% (active) | 0.025237 |
| 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027 | 5.0% | removed | 0.043478 |
| From 1 July 2027 | 8.0% | removed | 0.067797 |
The "effective factor" column is what you actually multiply by. It already accounts for the rate, the 11% flat deduction (where it applies), and 10% Austrian VAT. If a guest's stay straddles a rate change — say, three nights ending 1 July 2026 — you must split the calculation: each night uses the rate in force on that night. There is no smoothing or averaging.
What counts as the assessment basis
§12 WTFG defines the basis as the accommodation charge excluding breakfast, inclusive of VAT and inclusive of the Ortstaxe itself. In practice this means: the total the guest paid for the night, minus breakfast (if itemised), minus cleaning fees (a separate service), minus any tourism levies for other municipalities (irrelevant for purely Vienna stays).
If your Airbnb listing shows €200 per night, of which €20 is a cleaning fee and €15 is breakfast, your assessment basis is €165 per night. The Ortstaxe is calculated on the €165, not the €200. Most hosts get this wrong in the safe direction (paying more than required) — but if you've been paying on the gross including cleaning, you've been overpaying.
A worked example
Suppose a guest books your apartment for three nights at €180 per night, with no breakfast and a €30 cleaning fee. All three nights are in May 2026, so the current 3.2% rate applies.
- Gross accommodation: 3 × €180 = €540. (Cleaning and breakfast are excluded; here breakfast is zero.)
- Apply the effective factor: €540 × 0.025237 = €13.63.
- Owed Ortstaxe: €13.63 for that booking.
If the same booking happened in August 2026 (after the rate increase), it would be €540 × 0.043478 = €23.48 — almost double. If in August 2027 (after the second increase), €540 × 0.067797 = €36.61. This is why the rate change matters even for hosts who are otherwise compliant: you can't keep using the factor you memorised.
Who is exempt
§11 WTFG names the exemptions. These reduce the Ortstaxe pro rata by exempt person-nights, not the entire booking — if a family of three stays where one child is under 15, the child's share is exempt and the two adults' share is not.
- Children under 15. Verifiable by passport or ID at any reasonable later challenge from MA 6, so keep guest age data on file for the statutory record-keeping period.
- Students. Specific narrow exemption — typically requires a student ID or matriculation certificate and a stay for study purposes, not tourism.
- Business travellers with a dated employer letter confirming the stay is for work purposes. The letter must be retained on file. Casual business travel without documentation is not exempt.
- Long-stay guests staying more than three consecutive months at the same address. The first 90 nights are taxable; nights 91+ are not. This is the exemption that applies to corporate relocations and similar.
- Military personnel on duty.
The exemption is not automatic. You must document the basis for the exemption (employer letter, ID, registration) and retain it for seven years per Austrian general bookkeeping rules. If MA 6 audits you and you can't produce the documentation, the exemption is denied retroactively and you owe the tax plus interest.
How to report and pay
The Ortstaxe is reported and paid monthly. The deadline for any given month is the 15th of the following month. February 2026's bookings, for example, are due on 15 March 2026.
Filing happens via the City of Vienna's online tax portal under Ortstaxe-Abgabenerklärung. You enter the total taxable accommodation revenue for the month, the Ortstaxe owed, and any exempt person-nights with documentation references. The portal calculates and presents a payment slip; you transfer to the city's bank account by the deadline.
If you have zero bookings in a month, you still need to file a zero declaration. Skipping months without filing is a separate offence from underpayment, and MA 6 has begun matching booking platform data against filings to identify hosts who file irregularly.
Common mistakes I see hosts make
Calculating on the wrong base. The most common error: hosts calculate Ortstaxe on the platform's listed nightly rate (which often already includes platform fees) rather than on the actual accommodation portion they receive. The city's basis is the accommodation charge — what you would charge if there were no platform involved.
Forgetting the rate change mid-stay. When the rate jumps on 1 July 2026, any stay that includes both June and July nights has to be split. Hosts who built their own spreadsheet calculator will silently apply the old rate to all nights for months unless they update.
Treating cleaning fees as part of accommodation. The opposite mistake: paying Ortstaxe on the cleaning fee. This is overpayment but also a sign the host hasn't read §12 carefully — and audits can swing both ways once they start.
Trusting Airbnb to handle it. Airbnb collects and remits Ortstaxe in some cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Salzburg) but does not for Vienna. As a Vienna host, you remain the registered taxpayer regardless of which platform takes the booking. If the platform says "tourist tax not collected," that's your job. Booking.com and direct bookings have never collected on your behalf.
Not retaining exemption documentation. If you grant a child exemption verbally and the child's age isn't recorded against the booking, MA 6 will deny it on audit and you'll owe back-tax plus interest on years of bookings.
What to do if you've been doing it wrong
Hosts who realise they've been miscalculating — too high, too low, or skipping months — generally have two options: a Selbstanzeige (voluntary self-disclosure under §29 FinStrG, which generally avoids penalty if filed before MA 6 starts an investigation), or correction in the next monthly filing for small amounts. The threshold for "small" is judgmental; if the cumulative error is over a few hundred euros, talk to a Steuerberater before deciding which path to take. Voluntary disclosure done right protects you from criminal exposure on the underpayment.
Bottom line
The Wien Ortstaxe is, on the surface, a small tax. At 3.2% of net accommodation revenue, an apartment that books out for €30,000 a year owes around €750. After the 2027 increase to 8%, that becomes around €2,000. Not life-changing for the host, very meaningful for Vienna Tourism's annual budget, and meaningful enough that compliance is becoming actively enforced.
The right move for any host is the same: pick the correct factor for the period, calculate on the accommodation-only base, document exemptions, file monthly without skipping. Most of this can be automated; some property management software (including the one I work on) does it for you. But the obligation is yours either way, and the city does not chase the platform — they chase the registered apartment owner.
Want this on autopilot? Virtual Host AI computes Wien Ortstaxe per booking against the city's official factor and exports the monthly MA 6 workpaper as a single PDF — no spreadsheet maintenance. €5.90 / apartment / month on the Wien Compliance plan.
Sources and further reading: City of Vienna's tourism tax pages at wien.gv.at; the Wiener Tourismusförderungsgesetz (WTFG) §11 (exemptions) and §12 (rate, basis, reporting); Austrian Bundesabgabenordnung for general record-keeping requirements; Finanzstrafgesetz §29 for voluntary self-disclosure procedure. This article is general information, not legal or tax advice.
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