Accommodation Tax in Bratislava: Rates, Registration, Deadlines

What is the rate and who sets it?

The legal basis of the tax is Act No. 582/2004 Coll. on Local Taxes, which — unlike in Czechia — sets no nationwide cap on the rate. Each municipality sets the specific amount in its own generally binding ordinance (VZN). In Bratislava that is VZN No. 4/2023, which replaced the older VZN No. 8/2016 on 1 July 2023 and raised the previous uniform rate of €1.70:

• Old Town (Staré Mesto): €3.50 per person per overnight stay,
• other boroughs: €3.00 per person per overnight stay.

The taxpayer is the guest (the person staying temporarily for consideration); the payer is the operator of the establishment — you collect the tax from the guest and remit it to the city. The tax base is the number of overnight stays, at most 60 overnight stays with one payer in one calendar year.

Rates and conditions change through amendments — before relying on a specific number, always verify the current consolidated text of the ordinance directly on bratislava.sk.

How to register as a tax payer

The Act: under § 41a(1) of Act No. 582/2004 Coll. you must notify the municipality of your establishment’s accommodation capacity no later than the day you start providing paid temporary accommodation. The end of accommodation is notified within 30 days of the day it ends, and changes in facts decisive for the tax within 30 days of the day they occur.

The ordinance: Bratislava’s VZN No. 4/2023 repeats these deadlines in § 6(1)–(3) and adds what the notification must contain — your details as the payer including IBAN, the establishment’s name, address and category, the number of beds, the start date, and details of the platform if it collects the tax for you. You file it with the tax administrator, which is the capital city (the magistrate’s office) — not the individual boroughs, even though the rate differs by borough.

The city’s website: the city’s information page still states a deadline of “within 30 days of starting the activity” and asks you to attach an extract from the commercial or trade register. The 30-day deadline matches the repealed VZN No. 8/2016; under the Act and the ordinance in force, notify the start no later than the day you start hosting. Based on your notification the city assigns you a variable symbol, without which it cannot match your payments — so file it before the first settlement, not after.

How often is the tax declared and remitted?

Monthly. You file the tax settlement for the past calendar month and remit the tax no later than the 15th day of the following month, by bank transfer, postal order or — for payments up to €300 — in cash at the tax administrator’s cash desk (§ 6(7) and § 7 of Ordinance No. 4/2023). Bratislava is thereby among the municipalities with the shortest cycle — in smaller municipalities a quarterly remittance is also common, always according to the local VZN.

Who is exempt from the tax?

Act No. 582/2004 Coll. exempts nobody from the tax — exemptions are set by the city. Under § 10(1) of Ordinance No. 4/2023 as amended by VZN No. 1/2024 (in force from 1 April 2024), the following are exempt:

• persons with a severe disability, persons with a severe disability with a companion, and the companion,
• persons under 18 and persons over 70,
• full-time students — since April 2024 without the former 26-year age limit, until the end of the month in which they finish doctoral studies, including the gaps between degrees,
• recipients of crisis-intervention field social services or low-threshold day centres (continuously for at least 3 months).

Each reason is proven differently (§ 10(2)): disability by a decision or card, age by the entry in the guest records, studies by a student card — and you keep the documents as an annex to the guest book (§ 10(3)).

The most important exception to the exceptions: no exemption applies to accommodation booked through digital platforms (§ 10(4)). A child or senior who booked via Airbnb or Booking.com therefore pays the tax.

Bratislava’s specialty: Airbnb collects the tax at booking

In 2021 Bratislava concluded an agreement with Airbnb — the first of its kind in the V4 countries — under which Airbnb collects the accommodation tax directly at booking and remits it to the city on the host’s behalf.

Two things to watch, though:

1. Verify whether the agreement covers your specific listing. Automatic collection may not cover every type of listing — the responsibility toward the city stays with you, so it pays to keep your own record of payments in case of an inspection.
2. The agreement applies only to Airbnb. Reservations from Booking.com, other channels and direct bookings are collected and remitted by you in the standard way, in the monthly settlement.

How Best Guest handles this

Best Guest lets you set the borough-specific rate once, and then automatically calculates the accommodation tax for every stay and watches the 60-night cap. For Bratislava it also fills in the magistrate’s own monthly form directly — the header block and the person and overnight-stay rows — so you download it already completed.

The split between nights where a digital platform collected the tax and nights you remit yourself (rows 06 and 08 of the form) stays with you: Best Guest does not record which reservation the tax was collected on, so it leaves those rows — along with row 09, the tax itself — blank rather than printing a zero it cannot verify onto a tax filing. We walk through the whole form row by row in the monthly settlement guide.

Related pages

• Bratislava’s monthly accommodation-tax settlement — how to fill in the form
• Accommodation tax in Slovakia — the nationwide overview
• Act No. 582/2004 Coll. on Local Taxes
• Host obligations in Slovakia
• Fines for non-compliance