Accommodation Tax in Košice: the €3.50 Rate, Ordinance No. 229, Registration and Remittance

What is the rate and who sets it?

The legal framework is Act No. 582/2004 Coll. on Local Taxes — with no nationwide rate cap, so the specific amount is set by the city in its VZN. In Košice that is Ordinance No. 229 (effective from 1 May 2022, replacing the older VZN No. 104), most recently amended by city council resolution No. 642/2024 with effect from 1 January 2025. The current rate under §3: €3.50 per person per overnight stay — the same amount as in Bratislava’s Old Town or the High Tatras.

The taxpayer is the guest, the payer is the operator of the establishment. The tax base is the number of overnight stays, at most 60 overnight stays by one taxpayer with one payer per calendar year.

How to register as a tax payer

You fulfil the notification duty toward the tax administrator (the city of Košice) by filing a notification of the start of providing paid temporary accommodation, generally separately for each accommodation establishment. Under §4 of the ordinance, the notification contains the payer’s identification (name/business name, company ID or birth number), the establishment’s name, address and category, its accommodation capacity, and the day operations started. The city publishes notification templates on kosice.sk.

If the tax were to be collected for you, in part or in full, by a tax payer’s representative — typically a digital platform — you must state that explicitly in the notification, including identifying the platform.

How often is the tax notified and remitted?

Monthly. By the 15th day of the following calendar month you file the notification of the tax base for the past month, and within the same deadline the tax is also due — by transfer to the tax administrator’s account or in cash at the cash desk.

The monthly notification is fairly detailed: it states the total number of accommodated persons and overnight stays including a separate count of foreigners, overnight stays not counted into the tax base (above the 60-night cap), overnight stays of exempt persons, any overnight stays for which the tax was collected by a platform, and the tax calculation itself. In practice, this means you need guest records that keep these categories apart — manual counting from reservation e-mails stops being enough.

Who is exempt from the tax?

Under §6 of Ordinance No. 229, the following are exempt:

• holders of a ŤZP (severe disability) card,
• holders of a ŤZP-with-companion card and their companion,
• persons under 18 and persons over 70,
• full-time students up to 26.

Košice thereby has one of the widest ranges of exemptions among large Slovak cities — Bratislava’s ordinance, for example, has no exemption for children, seniors or students. Exempt overnight stays are reported separately in the monthly notification, so record the reason for exemption with every stay.

Does Airbnb collect the tax for me?

No — the only agreement on automatic tax collection at booking with a Slovak city so far is Airbnb’s in Bratislava (details in the Bratislava guide). In Košice you collect and remit the tax yourself. The ordinance, however, already provides for the institute of a tax payer’s representative under the amendment to Act No. 582/2004 Coll. — if a platform were to take over tax collection in the future, it would be a contractual arrangement that must be notified to the tax administrator.

How Best Guest handles this

Best Guest lets you set the Košice rate and exemptions once, and then automatically calculates the accommodation tax for every stay, watches the 60-night cap and the exempt guest categories, and prepares the documents for the monthly notification — including the split of overnight stays between domestic guests and foreigners that the Košice notification requires.

Related pages

• Accommodation tax in Slovakia — the nationwide overview
• Accommodation tax in Bratislava
• Act No. 582/2004 Coll. on Local Taxes
• Host obligations in Slovakia