Georgia's $5 Hotel Fee and Atlanta Hotel Tax at Checkout

On this page 6 sections

1. Three Charges on Every Atlanta Room Night
2. How the Georgia Hotel-Motel Fee Works Night by Night
3. Atlanta Hotel Tax Rate and Who Collects It
4. Extended Stays and Exemptions
5. All-In Pricing at Online Checkout
6. Filing Each Charge and Reconciling Monthly

Key takeaways

• The $5.00 Georgia fee applies to each room for each night, including free promo nights. A guest who is exempt from sales tax can still owe it.
• In two illustrative bookings, Atlanta's 8% tax, 8.9% Fulton sales tax and the flat fee add 19.7% to three $180 nights and 23.2% to one $79 night.
• The fee stops on the 31st night of a continuous stay. The first 30 nights are still charged, and if the guest checks out and back in, the count starts over.
• Show each charge as its own line, labeled with the government that sets it, so checkout, the folio and your tax returns all match.

A room night in Atlanta carries three charges on top of the rate. The Georgia hotel-motel fee is a flat $5.00 per room, per night. The City of Atlanta adds an 8% hotel-motel tax, and state and local sales tax applies as well, at a combined 8.9% in the Fulton County part of the city. All three are set by law, not by Visa, Mastercard or your processor. Each has its own exemptions and its own filing.

The rates below come from Georgia Department of Revenue (DOR) and Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) documents, plus published 2026 sales tax tables. Local rates change, so confirm them before you update a booking engine.

Three Charges on Every Atlanta Room Night

The fee works differently from the other two. It stays the same whatever the rate, so it takes a bigger share of a budget room than of a suite. Two illustrative bookings show the effect. Both assume a property inside Atlanta's city limits in Fulton County, with both percentages applied to the room charge only and the $5.00 fee shown as a separate line.

The motel guest pays about 3.5 percentage points more as a share of the rate, and the flat fee accounts for all of the difference. If you compete on low advertised rates, guests see that gap between the search results and your payment page. It's also why "plus 16.9% tax" in a listing understates the real total.

How the Georgia Hotel-Motel Fee Works Night by Night

Georgia created the fee in 2015 transportation funding legislation, and a state audit of the fee notes that House Bill 170 passed first. Since July 1, 2021, O.C.G.A. § 48-13-50.3 has charged $5.00 per night on the rental of "any room, lodging, or accommodation by an innkeeper." That reaches further than the original hotel-and-motel scope. The innkeeper collects the fee when the guest pays and sends it to DOR monthly.

The details are in DOR Rule 560-13-2-.01, and several of them surprise operators:

• Free nights still count. The rule's example is a "buy 4 nights, get the 5th free" promotion, and all five nights carry the fee.
• Comps don't. DOR's State Hotel-Motel FAQ says complimentary rooms with no rent or other consideration are not subject to the fee.
• It's per room. A family booking two rooms for three nights owes $30.00 in fees, not $15.00.
• Sales tax exemptions don't carry over. The rule says the sales tax exemptions in O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3 and the local hotel-motel tax exemptions in § 48-13-51(h) do not apply to the fee. A guest who is exempt from sales tax can still owe the $5.00.
• Skipping collection doesn't cancel the fee. An innkeeper who fails to collect it is liable for it.

The exemptions are narrow. Under the FAQ, licensed or registered special care facilities are outside the fee. In Letter Ruling LR SUT-2018-02, DOR said rooms bought by the federal government are not subject to it, and GSA's SmartTax page for Georgia ties that exemption to a centrally billed government card. A federal employee paying with an individually billed travel card is a different case, so train the front desk to ask which type of card the guest is using.

Atlanta Hotel Tax Rate and Who Collects It

Under O.C.G.A. § 48-13-51, Georgia cities may set a hotel-motel excise tax of up to 3%, or of exactly 5%, 6%, 7% or 8%. Atlanta uses the top rate. The DCA Hotel/Motel Excise Tax Rates and Revenue Report lists the City of Atlanta at 8% under paragraph (b), with $101.6 million collected in fiscal 2024.

Some older guides still list Atlanta at 7%. Use the rate on file with DCA and confirm it with the city when you set up your system. A one-point error on every folio adds up fast in an audit.

City limits matter more than the mailing address. An "Atlanta" address in unincorporated Fulton County or in another city falls under that jurisdiction's hotel-motel tax. Sales tax changes across those lines too. Per SalesTaxHandbook's Atlanta rate table, the 8.9% rate is 4% state, 3% Fulton County, 1.5% city and 0.4% special district. Part of Atlanta lies in DeKalb County, where the combined rate is different, as Hands Off Sales Tax points out. Check DOR's current quarterly rate chart for your exact location.

Short-Term Rental Tax in Atlanta

The 2021 change brought vacation homes and other short-term rentals under the fee. DOR's Policy Bulletin FET-2021-01 works through examples. When a booking runs through a marketplace innkeeper, the marketplace collects the fee for each night. An owner or property manager who rents directly collects the fee and also remits Georgia sales and use tax. If you list on a platform and also take direct bookings, track the two channels separately so nights the platform already collected on don't get taxed twice. Before your first direct booking, ask the city about registering for its hotel-motel tax, and confirm what the platform collects for you instead of assuming.

Extended Stays and Exemptions

The statute defines an extended stay rental as a room provided "for longer than 30 consecutive days to the same customer," and extended stays are exempt from the fee. The rule says the exemption starts "upon the 31st day of continuous occupancy." It doesn't apply backward. DOR's Letter Ruling LR SUT-2015-01 is direct about it: the first 30 days, and only those, are subject to the fee.

Take an illustrative 45-night continuous stay. The guest owes $150.00 in fees for nights 1 through 30 and nothing for nights 31 through 45. You don't refund the first $150.00 once the stay becomes an extended stay.

Two events affect the count. According to the FAQ, checking out and checking back in breaks the run of consecutive days, so the 30-night count restarts. Under the 2015 letter ruling, moving the guest to a different room in the same hotel does not break it.

Don't let your property management system (PMS) apply the 30-day logic to every charge. Sales tax and Atlanta's hotel-motel tax have their own long-stay rules in their own statutes, and their cutoffs don't automatically match the fee's. Set up each charge separately and have your tax adviser confirm the cutoffs. Our guide to extended stay hotel billing covers how to set up weekly and monthly charges once a guest settles in.

All-In Pricing at Online Checkout

Your checkout should show the same numbers as the folio at departure, line for line. A guest who sees $540 on the booking page and $646 on the card statement is likely to dispute the charge. Five rules of thumb keep the two matched:

1. Name and count the fee. "Georgia State Hotel-Motel Fee ($5.00 × 3 nights): $15.00" tells the guest exactly what it is. The example bill in DOR's rule shows $100 for the night and a separate $5.00 line for the fee. Paragraph (5) of the rule ties the fee's sales tax treatment to whether it is listed separately, so itemizing is the safe default.
2. Label each tax with the government that charges it. "City of Atlanta Hotel-Motel Tax (8%)" and "Sales Tax (8.9%)" are clearer than one "Taxes and Fees" total, and they match what you file.
3. Keep your own charges out of the tax lines. You set parking, amenity and cleaning fees yourself, so each belongs on its own line. Federal rules govern how those fees must appear in the advertised total; see FTC junk fee rules for hotels and resort fees.
4. Show the total before the card form. Calculate per room and per night, and show the grand total on the page where the guest enters payment details.
5. Authorize what you'll actually charge. If you take a pre-authorization at booking, include the taxes and the fee so the final charge doesn't exceed it. Our explainer on how long credit card authorization holds last covers holds for incidentals.

Booking engines handle this through the payment gateway and your PMS, so the tax setup has to be correct in both. MannyPay provides payment processing for hotels and online payment acceptance through gateways including Authorize.net and NMI, with 3-D Secure authentication for card-not-present bookings. If you're replacing systems, start with our guide to choosing a processor that integrates with your hotel PMS.

Filing Each Charge and Reconciling Monthly

The fee goes to DOR each month on the State Hotel-Motel Fee Return, which must be filed electronically. Sales tax goes to DOR on your sales and use tax return, and Atlanta's hotel-motel tax goes to the city. Late filing is expensive. Rule 560-13-2-.01 adds a penalty of 5 percent or $5.00, whichever is greater, on top of other penalties, and unpaid fees accrue interest.

A monthly check catches most errors before DOR does. Pull room-nights sold from the PMS. Subtract comped nights, nights paid with a federal centrally billed card, extended-stay nights after night 30, and nights a marketplace collected for you. Multiply what's left by $5.00. The result should match both the fee you collected and the fee you report. A gap usually means a rate code or booking channel is set up wrong.

Card deposits need a separate check. Your processor deposits the total charged minus processing fees, so the deposit is smaller than the folio total. You still owe the full tax and fee amounts collected from guests, not a share of the net deposit. Match deposits to folio totals first, then pull the tax lines from the folios. Our monthly credit card reconciliation guide explains how to match batches to sales.

One item to watch: DOR published Notice FET-2025-01 proposing amendments to Rule 560-13-2-.01, so work from the version currently in effect rather than a saved copy. Then run two test bookings through your live checkout, one for 3 nights and one for 31, and compare each line to the math above. If the numbers or labels don't match, request a free quote and a MannyPay specialist will go over your gateway and terminal setup with you. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice; confirm your obligations with a Georgia tax professional.

Sources

1. Georgia Department of Revenue, State Hotel-Motel FAQ
2. O.C.G.A. § 48-13-50.3 (FindLaw)
3. Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 560-13-2-.01, State Hotel-Motel Fee (Cornell LII)
4. Georgia DOR, Amended Rule 560-13-2-.01 State Hotel-Motel Fee
5. Georgia DOR, Notice FET-2025-01 (Proposed Amendment to Rule 560-13-2-.01)
6. Georgia DOR, Policy Bulletin FET-2021-01, Changes to the State Hotel-Motel Fee
7. Georgia DOR, Letter Ruling LR SUT-2015-01, Hotel-Motel Fee
8. Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, State Hotel-Motel Fee Report (Open Georgia)
9. Georgia DCA, Hotel/Motel Excise Tax Rates and Revenue Report
10. Georgia Main Street, Hotel Motel Tax
11. Sales Tax Institute, U.S. Federal Government Exempt From Georgia Hotel-Motel Fee (LR SUT-2018-02)
12. GSA SmartPay SmartTax, Georgia Tax Information
13. SalesTaxHandbook, Atlanta, Georgia Sales Tax Rate 2026
14. Hands Off Sales Tax, Atlanta Sales Tax Rate Breakdown

AR

About the author

Adrian Reyes

Adrian Reyes is Senior Payments & Fintech Editor for Beyond the Swipe, covering credit card processing, merchant accounts, payment technology and processing fees.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.