- Do I need a licence for a short-term rental in Mississauga?
- Yes. Mississauga requires a short-term rental accommodation licence, costing $283 per year and expiring one year from the date it is issued. It is only approved for a place you actually live in.
- How many nights a year can I short-term rent in Mississauga?
- 180 days a year in total, and no more than 30 days in a row for any single stay. The annual cap is the constraint most operators underestimate — it is roughly half the year, so the licence cannot support year-round nightly operation.
- What does Mississauga require beyond the licence fee?
- Commercial general liability insurance with a per-occurrence limit of at least $2 million, and a valid Level 1 Criminal Record Check issued in the last 60 days by Peel Regional Police specifically — a check from another force will not be accepted.
The 180-night cap is the real constraint
Mississauga's licence permits stays of no more than 30 days in a row, up to a total of 180 days a year. Both halves matter, but the annual cap is the one that reshapes a business plan: it is under half the year, which means a Mississauga short-term rental cannot be a year-round nightly operation the way a Niagara or Muskoka property can. It is structurally a part-year use of a home you live in.
For an operator running a mixed portfolio, that makes Mississauga inventory awkward to treat like the rest. If your booking system cannot count nights-per-year per unit against a cap, you will find out you crossed it after the fact, from the City rather than from your own numbers.
Principal residence, verified
The licence is only approved for the dwelling unit where you live for most of the year, and the application requires verification of that. As in Toronto and Ottawa, an investment unit you do not occupy is not eligible — Mississauga simply will not issue the licence.
Two requirements that take longer than the paperwork
$2 million of commercial general liability
The City requires commercial general liability insurance with a per-occurrence limit of at least $2 million. Note the word commercial: a residential homeowner's policy is generally not this, and many insurers treat undisclosed short-term renting as grounds to deny a claim outright. Start this conversation with your broker before you start the application.
A Level 1 check from Peel Regional Police
A valid Level 1 Criminal Record Check, issued within the last 60 days, by Peel Regional Police only. Two constraints hide in that sentence: it must come from Peel specifically, so a check you already hold from another service does not carry over, and its 60-day freshness window means obtaining it too early is as unhelpful as too late. Sequence it deliberately against when you intend to submit.
Municipal Accommodation Tax: 6%, remitted monthly
Mississauga's MAT is 6%, applying to accommodation of 30 days or less. It is charged on the room or space used for accommodation and not on separately billed extras such as parking, laundry or meals, with HST added on top of the MAT amount.
Remittance is monthly: the completed MAT return and payment are due by the end of each month for the tax collected in the previous month. That is a tighter cycle than the quarterly schedules several other Ontario municipalities use, and it is worth setting up as a recurring monthly close rather than something you do when you remember.
Direct PMS counts nights per unit per year, so the 180-night cap is a number you watch rather than one you discover you crossed.
Short-term rental operators →- First published.
Toronto regulates short-term rentals through mandatory registration, not a discretionary licence — and the rules differ sharply depending on whether you're renting a whole unit or a room in your own home.
MAT applies to almost every short stay in Toronto, and the rate has moved twice in the last fourteen months — as of 8 August 2026 it's back down to 6%, after a temporary jump to 8.5%.
Every residential property owner in Toronto must declare occupancy status every year — even an occupied home — or the property is automatically deemed vacant and taxed at 3% of its assessed value.
MAT is set city by city, and almost nothing about it is uniform — not the rate, not the stay length that triggers it, not how often you remit. Rates below are taken from each municipality's own published pages, not from an aggregator.