Accommodation Tax Exemptions in Slovakia: Children, Disability Card Holders

Who does not pay accommodation tax: the Act leaves the decision to the municipality

In § 43, Act No. 582/2004 Coll. requires the municipality to set “exemptions from the tax or tax reductions” in its VZN. If the VZN lists no exemption, every accommodated person pays the tax — a child, a senior and a local resident alike.

The Act itself knows only two rules that are not exemptions in the true sense:

• An odídenec is not a taxpayer (§ 38a). This is a person who has been granted temporary refuge; you enter them in the guest register (kniha ubytovaných), but their overnight stays do not count into the tax base.
• At most 60 overnight stays (§ 39). From the 61st night of the same guest with the same accommodation provider in a calendar year, no tax is collected.

A detailed explanation of both rules and a comparison of 13 cities is in the article who does not pay accommodation tax. Here we look at what it looks like across the whole of Slovakia.

Analysis of 1,063 VZNs: whom municipalities exempt

We collected the VZNs of Slovak municipalities from their websites and selected those that levy the accommodation tax and whose full text we have — 1,063 municipalities in total. In each we searched for provisions on exemptions and tax reductions:

One municipality can exempt several groups. What follows for the accommodation provider: in a typical Slovak municipality every guest pays the tax, and an exemption is an exception you have to actively find in the VZN.

How we counted. We collected the VZNs from municipal websites up to October 2026. We searched for the provisions on exemptions automatically and checked the results against the cities whose VZNs we had previously verified by hand. Take the figures as a lower bound: an unusually worded exemption may have slipped through, and some municipalities may have amended their VZN in the meantime. For a specific municipality, its current VZN therefore always decides.

Do children pay accommodation tax? Age limits across municipalities

Children are exempt in about 13% of municipalities (136) — and almost every one does it differently. The age limits we found:

The three most common limits — 6, 15 and 18 years — are represented almost equally. All minors are thus exempt in only 37 of 1,063 municipalities, roughly one in thirty. For comparison: in Czechia, children under 18 are exempt by law in every municipality, which is the most common mistake of hosts who operate in both countries.

Beware of the wording too: “up to 6 years”, “younger than 6 years” and “have not turned seven” are not the same thing. Some VZNs also specify on which day the age is assessed — for example, on the day the accommodation ends.

In the tourist destinations whose VZNs we verified, it looks like this: Bratislava, Košice, Vysoké Tatry and Trnava exempt everyone under 18 (in Bratislava, however, not for a booking via a platform), Štrba, Ždiar and Terchová children under 15, Liptovský Mikuláš “persons up to 10 years of age”, Poprad children who “have not turned seven”, Bešeňová, Bojnice, Banská Štiavnica, Senec, Trenčín, Rajecké Teplice and Turčianske Teplice children under 6, and Trenčianske Teplice only children “up to three years of life inclusive”. In Demänovská Dolina (the Jasná resort), in Zuberec, in Banská Bystrica and in Bardejov, children pay. And Piešťany lists persons under 18 among the exempt, but only “at the level of 90%” — children pay a tenth of the tax too.

Do pensioners pay accommodation tax?

Mostly yes. Only 44 municipalities (4%) exempt seniors, and the age limits differ even more than for children:

Among the verified cities, seniors are exempt for example in Bratislava, Košice, Dolný Kubín and Skalica (over 70), Terchová (from 75, reached no later than the day before arrival), Martin (pensioners over 65) or Podolínec (pensioners over 62). Rajecké Teplice gives people from 64 only a discount of €1 per night. The record is held by Dolná Streda, which exempts “persons older than 90 years”. Poprad, Vysoké Tatry, Liptovský Mikuláš, Štrba and Piešťany do not exempt seniors.

For comparison: even in Czechia seniors are not exempt by law — only 26 of 2,158 municipalities exempt them.

ŤZP and the companion

ŤZP card holders are exempt in about one municipality in eight (12%), their companions in 9% of municipalities. Some VZNs exempt only holders of a ŤZP card with a companion (ŤZP/S), others all card holders, and others also blind or bedridden persons or recipients of an invalidity pension. In Czechia, by contrast, holders of a ZTP/P card and their companions are exempt by law.

Municipalities also differ in how entitlement is proven: Bratislava wants a decision or a ŤZP card and the documents must be kept as an annex to the guest register, while other municipalities are satisfied with an entry in your records. Details in the article who does not pay accommodation tax.

Students

Students are exempt in 48 municipalities (4.5%) — almost always only when accommodated in a dormitory or student residence, often with an age limit of 26 or a full-time study condition. A student in an ordinary guesthouse or apartment generally pays.

Local residents pay — with a few exceptions

By law, the taxpayer is every natural person who is temporarily accommodated for payment in an establishment — including a resident with permanent residence in the same municipality. Only a handful of municipalities (less than 1% in our analysis) have an explicit exemption for residents with permanent residence. Among the verified cities these are the spa towns Piešťany (“natural persons with permanent residence in the town of Piešťany”) and Turčianske Teplice (“a person who has permanent residence in the territory of the town of Turčianske Teplice is not a taxpayer”); Senec exempts its residents only in a recreation facility owned by the town.

More common is an exemption for persons registered for temporary residence directly in the accommodation establishment — that is, for people who actually live in it. Žilina, Trenčín, Bardejov, Piešťany and Trenčianske Teplice, for example, have such a provision. Trenčín also exempts anyone accommodated in an establishment for longer than 30 days.

Here the Slovak and Czech rules diverge completely: in Czechia nobody who is registered in the municipality pays the local fee — that follows directly from the law.

Lesser-known exemptions

• A cottage owner and their family (34 municipalities): typically recreational municipalities that do not want to tax a family accommodated in their own cottage — for example Kováčovce.
• Outdoor-education schools, ski courses and camps (14 municipalities) and participants in sports events (16 municipalities).
• Facility staff and people accommodated because of work for the facility (14 municipalities).
• A flat fee instead of an exemption: several municipalities exempt guests if the accommodation provider pays an annual flat fee per bed.

Examples from the verified VZNs:

• Bojnice exempt blood donors who hold at least the silver Janský plaque — they hand a copy of the plaque certificate to the accommodation provider.
• Skalica exempts the owner of a recreational property in the town’s cadastral area, their spouse, relatives in the direct line, siblings and their families — similar to Kováčovce.
• Banská Bystrica has no ordinary exemption — neither for children nor for ŤZP card holders. It can exempt only accredited participants and distinguished guests of an international sports event that the city co-organises.
• Terchová wants an exemption proven by the original or an officially certified copy of a document, and age by a document issued by an authority of the Slovak state administration. For foreign guests it is worth checking with the municipality what document it will accept.

A discount is not an exemption

Besides exemptions, some municipalities give a tax reduction — for example, Vysoké Tatry a half rate for spa treatment approved by a health insurer on a type A voucher and for participants in conditioning stays (art. 6(3) of VZN No. 5/2023), or Nitra an 80% discount for students of Nitra universities in contracted facilities. In the return for the municipality this is a different item: an exempt overnight stay is not counted into the tax base at all, a discounted one is, only at a lower rate. Anyone who reports a discount as an exemption declares a lower tax base than they should.

More examples where a discount replaces an exemption:

• Rajecké Teplice reduce the tax by €1 per overnight stay for seniors from 64, ŤZP card holders and groups of children under 15 at camps or school trips.
• Liptovské Sliače have two bands for children: a 100% reduction up to 3 years and 50% up to 15 years.
• Trenčianske Teplice exempt holders of a ŤZP/S card, but for holders of a ŤZP card and companions reduce the tax by only 50%.
• Bardejov exempts neither children nor seniors, but charges ŤZP card holders, people in material need and guests with a type A treatment voucher €1.50 instead of €2.50.
• Bojnice have a lower rate of €1.00 for children aged 6 to 18 (adults €1.80).

Booking and Airbnb: in Bratislava the exemption does not apply

In Bratislava and in Dunajská Lužná, the VZN explicitly states that no exemption is granted for accommodation arranged through digital platforms. The same guest with a ŤZP card is thus exempt on a direct booking and not exempt on a booking via Airbnb or Booking.com. We found no other municipality with such a clause in the analysis, and of the other 24 cities in the table below none has it. More in the article who does not pay accommodation tax.

Tourist destinations: who is exempt where

An overview of 25 cities and municipalities whose current VZNs we verified directly in the text of the ordinance (as of October 2026):

“ŤZP/S” denotes the card of a natural person with a severe disability with a companion. The exact wording, conditions and method of proof are in the sources below the article — for wordings such as “up to 10 years”, check the boundary age directly in the VZN or with the municipal office.

Rates for other destinations are in the overview of accommodation tax rates.

How to find out whom your municipality exempts

1. On the municipality’s website find the list of valid VZNs — not the official notice board, where drafts are posted too.
2. Open the VZN on local taxes or the separate VZN on the accommodation tax and check whether later amendments (addenda, amendments) exist.
3. In the part on the accommodation tax look for the provisions on “exemption from the tax” and “tax reduction” and find out how entitlement is proven.

Why the order matters: in Stará Lesná, an older version of the VZN with an exemption for ŤZP card holders is still available on the municipality’s website, an exemption that the valid VZN of 2023 no longer has. Anyone relying on the first file they found would grant an exemption that no longer applies.

How Best Guest handles it

• Exemptions are rules of a specific municipality, not a nationwide setting. For municipalities whose VZNs we have verified, Best Guest offers the guest exactly the exemptions their municipality recognises, including a citation of the VZN provision.
• Age does not have to be ticked off. During online check-in the guest enters their date of birth and entitlement under the municipality’s age limit is derived from it automatically — Poprad’s 7 years as well as Košice’s 18.
• Other reasons the guest marks in advance and you confirm them on arrival. The accommodation tax is calculated only from the overnight stays that belong in the tax base, and the guest register keeps the reason and the legal basis for each exemption.
• Your municipality not verified yet? Write to us — we will verify the VZN and set up the exemptions for your property.

Related pages

• Who does not pay accommodation tax: a comparison of 13 cities
• How Slovak accommodation tax is calculated
• Overview of accommodation tax rates
• Host inspection: what to prepare
• Act No. 582/2004 Coll. on Local Taxes