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Victoria’s short stay levy: 7.5%, who pays it, and who is excluded

Sergej Sitki · founder of ReceptionGO and host
Published 29 October 2026 · 8 min read

General information, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Check your own case with your council, the ATO or the state revenue office, or an accountant. Rates and dates below were checked on the date shown — recheck the linked official page before you lodge, register or set a price from them.

From 1 January 2025 Victoria charges 7.5% on a stay under 28 days. The platform pays when the guest books there. You pay when you take the booking yourself. Hotels, motels, hostels, caravan parks and a principal place of residence are excluded. There is no statewide night cap.

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Victoria did not copy NSW’s night cap. From 1 January 2025 it put a 7.5% levy on short stays and gave the money, in the government’s words, to social and affordable housing, with a quarter of it set aside for regional Victoria. For a host the question is blunter: does this booking attract the levy, and is it your job to send the money or the platform’s?

What a short stay is

A short stay is less than 28 consecutive days in the same property. Checkout day is not counted. A booking from a Friday to the Sunday a week later is inside the levy. A 28-day stay is not a short stay for this Act. That 28-day line also shows up in GST for commercial accommodation, but it is not the same tax — see GST and holiday-rental income before you mix the two on an invoice.

The levy is 7.5% of the booking fee. The fee includes the nightly rate, cleaning, any GST you charge, and a late checkout. It does not include card fees or a charge for damage. The SRO’s own example: $1,000 of booking fees, $75 of levy. If you charge one all-inclusive amount, the levy is calculated on that amount. Uneven cents round down to the nearest 5 cents.

Who is outside it

Exclusions, in the SRO’s list, include:

• a short stay in the principal place of residence of the owner or renter
• a space that cannot be occupied separately from the main residence
• commercial residential accommodation — hotels, motels, hostels — and, on the commercial-residential page, caravan parks and camping grounds
• a houseboat the guest can move during the stay

Separate exemptions, which do not need a declaration, cover staff housing, rooming houses, retirement villages, student accommodation tied to an institution, and some crisis accommodation. A holiday house that is not anyone’s home is not in that list.

If the property is excluded and a platform is still charging the levy, you give the platform the SRO declaration. You do not send that form to the SRO. The platform keeps it for five years. If you only take direct bookings of an excluded property, you do not lodge a return for those stays.

A motel, a traditional B&B that is really a small commercial premises, and a licensed holiday park should read the commercial-residential test rather than assume the levy applies because guests stay a weekend. A single apartment in a building that also contains a reception is often still the owner’s residential let, not the building’s. The SRO tells you to look at the ATO ruling. When the building is genuinely “on the line”, a private ruling is cheaper than a year of wrong returns.

Direct bookings are the part you lodge

Platforms — the SRO names Airbnb, Stayz and Booking.com — register as platforms, collect the levy on bookings they facilitate, and lodge it. They do not register your individual property. If that is your only channel, you have nothing to file.

The moment you accept a booking yourself, you are in the system as an owner or as a tenant. Register before you lodge the first return. The form asks for an SRO customer number if you have one, contact details, the date the first booking ended after 1 January 2025, and your 2024 short-stay booking fees. An ABN is optional on that form.

Cross $75,000 part-way through the year and the rest of that year is quarterly. Payment on a return lodged in the portal is by card or a one-off direct debit. An assessment can be paid by BPAY or card. None of that is GST, and none of it is council rates.

This is why a direct site that hides the levy inside a vague “service fee” becomes a problem in January. Itemise the booking fee the Act describes, take it by card, and keep the record with the stay. How to do the direct channel without inventing a second set of dates is in direct bookings. What the levy does to a Melbourne week around the tennis or the Grand Prix is in Melbourne short stays.

The levy is not the only Victorian rule

There is no statewide night cap to pair with the 7.5%. There is a new power for owners corporations: from 1 January 2025 a special resolution can ban short-stay use of lots, and the ban cannot reach a lot that is the owner’s or occupier’s principal place of residence. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes the rule. Read it before you buy a docklands apartment “because Victoria doesn’t cap nights”. The comparison with NSW and Queensland is in strata by-laws.

How this sits beside other states — NSW’s register, WA’s register, the ACT’s platform-only levy — is the national comparison. The ACT levy is not yours to copy: different rate, different person liable, and direct bookings there are outside the levy.