Does Georgia's hotel-motel fee apply to free-standing vacation homes rented as whole accommodations in a resort development?

Plain-English summary

The resort manager did not have to collect Georgia's state hotel-motel fee on rentals of the free-standing vacation homes. The resort was made up of multiple separate buildings rather than one building with at least five hotel rooms.

Each home was also rented as a single accommodation. Guests had access to all bedrooms, so those bedrooms were not separately offered hotel rooms. Neither the development, the individual homes, nor their bedrooms satisfied the fee's hotel-room requirements.

Common questions

Q: Did multiple bedrooms make each vacation home a hotel?

A: No. The bedrooms were part of one whole-unit accommodation, not rented separately.

Q: Did common resort management combine the separate homes into one hotel?

A: No. The definition required a building with at least five hotel rooms, and the homes were free-standing buildings.

Citations and references

• O.C.G.A. § 48-13-50.3(b) -- state hotel-motel fee
• Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. r. 560-13-2-.30-.01(2)(b)-(c) -- hotel and hotel-room definitions

Source

• Landing page: Georgia Sales & Use Tax Letter Rulings
• Original PDF: LR SUT-2015-05

Original ruling text

Date Issued:
August 5, 2015
Georgia Letter Ruling: LR SUT-2015-05
Topic: Hotel-Motel Fee
This letter is in response to your request for guidance on the application of the Georgia hotel-motel fee to vacation
Unit rentals.
Facts as provided by the Taxpayer
Taxpayer is a development of multiple single-family free-standing residential vacation Units located in Georgia.
This letter will refer to the development as “Resort”. The Units range in size from one to eight bedrooms and have
two bathrooms, a kitchen, common areas, and a deck. Taxpayer owns a number of the Units; the remaining Units are
owned by individuals.
Taxpayer provides a property management service to individual Unit owners. For a fee, Taxpayer will rent out the
Unit to guests on behalf of the owner. Taxpayer collects the rental payments and performs other related services,
including advertising, scheduling, maintenance, housekeeping, and laundry.
Issue
Is Taxpayer required to collect the hotel-motel fee on the Unit rentals?
Analysis
Georgia law imposes a $5.00 per night fee for each calendar night that a hotel room is rented, until the rental
becomes an extended stay rental.1 “Hotel room” means “a room (or suite of conjoined rooms offered as a single
accommodation) (i) in a hotel (ii) that is used to provide private sleeping accommodations to paying customers and
(iii) that typically includes linen or housekeeping service.”2 “Hotel” means “a building that has 5 or more hotel
rooms under common ownership, regardless of the name of the facility and regardless of how the facility classifies
itself.”3 The following example provided in the Regulation further explains the definition of “hotel”:
“A guest rents a cabin at a facility that has 10 free-standing cabins on a single property. Each
cabin is offered as a single accommodation, and the guest renting the cabin has access to all rooms
in the cabin. The cabin is not a ‘hotel’ because it does not have 5 or more hotel rooms.”4
Based on the facts provided, the Resort is not a hotel because it is not a single building with five or more hotel
rooms but is instead comprised of multiple free-standing buildings (the Units). Although the Units are used to
provide sleeping accommodations, they are not in a hotel and thus are not hotel rooms. Furthermore, the bedrooms
in the Units are not separate hotel rooms because the rooms together make up one single accommodation, and the
guest renting the entire Unit presumably has access to all of the rooms within the Unit. Because the bedrooms in the
Units are not separate hotel rooms, the Units are not themselves hotels because they do not have five or more hotel
rooms.
Ruling
Taxpayer is not required to collect the hotel-motel fee on its Unit rentals because neither the Units nor the bedrooms
in the Units are hotel rooms for purposes of O.C.G.A. § 48-13-50.3.
The opinions expressed in this ruling are based upon the information contained in your request and are limited to the
specific transactions, facts, circumstances, and taxpayer in question. Should the circumstances regarding the
transactions change or differ materially from those represented, this ruling may become invalid. Subsequent
statutory or administrative rule changes or judicial interpretations of the statutes or rules upon which this advice is
based may subject similar future transactions to a different tax treatment than that expressed in this ruling.

1

O.C.G.A. § 48-13-50.3(b).
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 560-13-2-.30-.01(2)(c).
3
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 560-13-2-.30-.01(2)(b).
4
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 560-13-2-.30-.01(2)(b)1.
2