Slovak Tourist Tax: Do Airbnb or Booking.com Collect It?

Who collects the tax under Slovak law when a platform is involved?

The Local Taxes Act has three roles:

• The taxpayer is the guest who stays for payment.
• The tax payer (platiteľ dane) is the operator of the establishment who provides the stay (§38(2)). The operator collects the tax from the guest and pays it to the municipality.
• The tax payer’s representative is a person who arranges paid short-term accommodation through a digital platform with an offer of accommodation in the municipality (§38(3)). Amendment No. 470/2021 Coll. introduced this role from 11 December 2021.

A representative does not replace the payer automatically. The Act lets a municipality conclude an agreement with it on records, on how the tax is collected, on confirmation of payment and on deadlines for remittance (§41c). Where such an agreement works, the representative collects the tax from the guest on the payer’s behalf and pays it to the tax administrator’s account, and a payment to that account counts as the tax paid (§41c).

The payer does not disappear. They must tell the municipality that a representative collects the tax instead of them in whole or in part (§41a(3)), keep a detailed register of guests (§41a) and the tax base they report is reduced by the base the representative took over (§41a(4)). Without an agreement between the municipality and the platform, none of this applies and you do everything yourself.

Do Airbnb or Booking.com collect the accommodation tax in Slovakia?

Airbnb. Airbnb and the City of Bratislava signed an agreement in June 2021, and since 1 July 2021 Airbnb has collected the tax on Bratislava bookings and paid it to the city (Airbnb Newsroom). Airbnb’s help page gives a rate of €3.00 to €3.50 per person per night depending on the postcode and covers Bratislava listings only; the guest pays the tax as part of the booking and the host stays responsible for other tax obligations (Airbnb Help 3072). At our check on 4 November 2026 we found no other Slovak municipality. More about Bratislava is in our Bratislava guide.

Booking.com. We found no agreement with a Slovak municipality. Its partner documentation says “in select markets” Booking.com collects per-person charges (such as city tax) from the guest during booking and that the amount is then part of the property’s payout. It names no countries and says nothing about passing the money to a municipality. Treat Booking.com as a source of bookings, not as a representative.

An academic study published in 2025 on how Slovak accommodation providers see the system concluded that the 2021 amendment had not changed practice much and that the regime is largely not applied (Vartašová and Červená 2025; we read the abstract only). That matches what we found: an agreement is the exception, not the rule.

The platform collects, or you collect: what differs

What to do when a platform collects the tax for you

For Airbnb bookings in Bratislava (and anywhere else a municipality has such an agreement), four things matter:

1. Tell the municipality. The Act requires you to report that a representative collects the tax in your place, in whole or in part (§41a(3)). It gives no deadline; the Slovak Financial Directorate’s view, quoted in our overview of the Act, is 30 days as for a change. An ordinance may add content: Košice (§4(2)(e) and (3)) asks for the representative’s name, ID number, seat and contact details, and the name and website of the digital platform.
2. Know which nights the platform taxed. Those nights are not part of the tax you pay yourself. In Košice’s monthly notice they are a separate figure and the tax is calculated only on the nights taxed by the payer (§4(5)(e) points 3 and 4, and (f)).
3. Do not ask the guest for the tax a second time. A guest taxed by the platform has already paid with the booking.
4. Keep the guest register for every guest, including those whose tax the platform collected.

In Bratislava, according to our overview of Ordinance No. 4/2023, the platform pays the collected tax quarterly in one amount for all establishments and you report those nights separately in your monthly return. That mechanism is specific to Bratislava; elsewhere the ordinance and the agreement decide.

What to do when a platform does not collect the tax

For Booking.com, Airbnb outside Bratislava and direct bookings the steps do not depend on the channel:

1. Find your municipality’s ordinance. It sets the rate in euros per person per night, the deadlines and the exemptions (§43). Rates: rate overview.
2. Notify the municipality of your capacity no later than the day you first accommodate a guest for payment (§41a), then report the tax base each month under the ordinance.
3. Collect the tax from the guest: in the price, as a separate item or on site. How to do it on Airbnb and Booking.com step by step is in How to collect the accommodation tax from guests.
4. Keep the register for every guest (§41a(2)) and remit the tax by the ordinance’s deadline. The 60-night limit and exemptions are judged under the ordinance and your register.

How to record it in Best Guest

This section describes a setting in the Best Guest admin, not a legal interpretation. For a property, open Local Fees and the button Platforms that collect the fee. The page Platforms collecting the local fee shows one checkbox, Collects the fee itself, for each platform the property is connected to through reservations or calendar links; click Save after changing it. By default no platform is marked as collecting the fee and it stays with you.

For now this only records your answer for the property: it does not change your reports or any amount. So you still determine yourself the nights for which a platform collected the tax when you prepare the notice for the municipality. Tick the box only where the platform really collects the tax and remits it to the municipality, and for Bratislava properties with Airbnb bookings read the recommendation in How to collect the accommodation tax from guests.

What may change

• New agreements. Any municipality can conclude an agreement with another platform under §41c. We plan to re-check Airbnb’s help pages (2509 and 3072), Booking.com’s documentation and the ordinances of larger cities by 1 December 2026 at the latest.
• The text of Act No. 582/2004 Coll. We read the version in force until 31 December 2026. We plan to check whether a new text of §38 and §41a to §41c applies from 1 January 2027.
• Municipal ordinances. Rates, deadlines and the content of notices change municipality by municipality; the current ordinance of your town applies.
• Short-term rental register (from 1 January 2027). It changes duties around the registration number, not who collects the tax (Act No. 133/2026 Coll.).

This guide is general information and does not replace a check of your case with the municipality or a tax adviser.

Related guides

• How to collect the accommodation tax from guests
• Accommodation tax in Bratislava and in Košice
• Booking.com: host obligations in Slovakia
• How the accommodation tax is calculated
• Connecting Booking.com and Airbnb to Best Guest