- What is the Municipal Accommodation Tax rate in Toronto?
- 6%. The rate rose to a temporary 8.5% on 1 June 2025 to help fund Toronto's FIFA World Cup 2026 hosting costs, and reverted to 6% on 1 August 2026. Any guide, contract or booking engine still quoting 8.5% is out of date.
- What does MAT apply to?
- Any room used for rental accommodation for four hours or more, on a continuous stay of 30 days or less — hotels and short-term rentals alike, with no lighter regime for individual hosts. It is charged only on the room-cost portion of a booking, not on cleaning fees, damage deposits or other add-ons billed separately.
- Who pays MAT — the guest or the operator?
- The guest. MAT is collected from the guest and remitted by the operator, so it belongs on the booking as a separate line rather than absorbed into the nightly rate.
The rate right now: 6%
Toronto's Municipal Accommodation Tax rose from 6% to a temporary 8.5% on 1 June 2025, and reverted to 6% on 1 August 2026. If you're reading a guide, spreadsheet or contract quoting 8.5%, it's out of date — that rate window has closed.
Given how recently this changed, the safest move for any operator is to point your booking engine at the City's published rate rather than hard-coding a number anywhere it's expensive to update.
Why the rate jumped
The City's own MAT rate page doesn't state a reason for the temporary increase — only the effective dates. The reason traces to the authorizing council decision: the increase was enacted by By-law 1259-2024, passed under Executive Committee Item EX18.17, adopted by Council on 13–14 November 2024 under the title "FIFA World Cup 2026 Toronto: Revenue Opportunities to Support Hosting Obligations." Council voted 21–4 in favour. Reporting at the time put the projected additional revenue at roughly $56 million, against an approximately $95 million gap in the City's share of FIFA World Cup 2026 hosting costs.
What it applies to
MAT applies to any room used for rental accommodation for four hours or more, on a continuous stay of 30 days or less. It's charged only on the room-cost portion of a booking — not on cleaning fees, damage deposits or other add-ons billed separately.
It applies uniformly across hotels, short-term rentals and every other transient-accommodation category the City tracks; there's no separate lighter regime for individual STR hosts versus commercial operators.
Collect it, remit it, don't absorb it
MAT is a tax collected from the guest, not a cost the operator carries. The practical failure mode is quoting a nightly rate that quietly includes MAT instead of adding it as a separate line — which either erodes margin every booking or requires an awkward retroactive correction once someone notices.
Who actually collects and remits it
How MAT reaches the City depends on how the booking was made — and the operator's own obligations don't disappear just because a platform handled the money.
Platform bookings: Airbnb's collection agreement
Airbnb has a Voluntary Collection Agreement with the City: it collects the 6% MAT from the guest at booking and remits it directly, and also reports booked-night counts to the City itself — so operators exclude that revenue and those nights from their own report. The City's operator instructions name Airbnb specifically; they don't name Vrbo, Booking.com or other platforms individually, so operators using those platforms should confirm each one's collection status directly rather than assume it's handled.
Direct bookings: you collect and remit
For a booking made outside a platform, the operator collects the 6% MAT at time of payment and remits it to the City using their Short-Term Rental Registration Number as the payee reference.
You must file either way
Every registered operator files a MAT report for every reporting period, even if the unit sat empty all quarter or a platform remitted 100% of the tax owed — skipping the filing because "the platform already paid it" is a compliance gap, not a shortcut. Corrections to a filed report are only accepted for the current and immediately preceding period. Short-term rental operators remit quarterly (30 days after quarter-end: 30 April, 30 July, 30 October, 30 January); hotels remit monthly.
Registering to collect it
Short-term rental operators
There's no separate "MAT vendor" registration to apply for. Your existing Short-Term Rental Registration Number doubles as your MAT filing and payment identifier — the same number that proves you're licensed to operate is the one you enter on your quarterly MAT report and use as the payee reference when remitting.
Hotels and other traditional providers
Hotels, motels, hostels, private clubs and condo hotels register and file through the City's Hotel MAT Reporting Service, with payments made directly to the City. Questions about setting up reporting or payments go through mat@toronto.ca. Unlike short-term rentals, hotel MAT is filed and remitted monthly rather than quarterly.
Exemptions, penalties and record-keeping
What's exempt
The exemption list is narrow and specific — there's no general small-operator or low-revenue carve-out. MAT does not apply to:
- Treatment centres receiving provincial aid under the Ministry of Community and Social Services Act
- Summer camps where overnight accommodation is part of the programming
- Houses of refuge or lodging for the reformation of offenders
- Charitable, non-profit philanthropic corporations organized as shelters for the relief of the poor or emergency
- Hotel or motel rooms used by the City or its agents for shelter accommodation purposes
- Condo guest suites and rooms
- Tents or trailer sites supplied by a campground, tourist camp or trailer park
- Accommodations an employer supplies to its own employees in premises it operates
- Accommodation purchased by a person or entity listed under section 268 of the City of Toronto Act, 2006
What happens if you're late
Interest accrues at 1.25% per month (15% per annum) on overdue MAT, from the day after the due date until paid in full, and a dishonoured payment adds a flat $40 NSF charge. Beyond interest, the City can revoke a short-term rental operator's registration, or refuse to renew it, for failing to file and remit MAT. The municipal code also sets statutory fines for knowing non-compliance: continuing offences — a false statement on a MAT report, destroying records to evade tax, wilfully evading payment — carry a minimum fine of $500 per day and up to $10,000 per day for each day the offence continues, while a general knowing contravention can draw a fine of up to $100,000.
What records to keep
Operators must retain all records relating to accommodation transactions, and to all MAT paid, payable and remitted, for a minimum of three years. The City can audit or inspect those records, or demand them in writing, at any time within that window, and interfering with an audit is itself an offence. For a portfolio running several units, that means booking-level detail per property — not just a rolled-up quarterly total — since an audit can ask which specific stays a given remittance covers.
MAT and HST: tax on tax
MAT is charged on the room cost, and HST is then charged on the room cost plus the MAT — not on the room cost alone. The City's own worked example: a $100 room subtotal plus 6% MAT ($6) gives a $106 taxable base; 13% HST on that base is $13.78, for a total of $119.78 charged to the guest.
For short-term rental operators, this only applies if the operator is registered for HST in the first place — operators with short-term rental income under $30,000, the CRA's small-supplier threshold, don't need to register for or charge HST at all, on the room or on the MAT. Where HST does apply, it's remitted to the Canada Revenue Agency along with the operator's other HST filings, entirely separate from the MAT remittance that goes to the City.
Direct PMS adds MAT as its own line on every booking at the current rate, so it is collected from the guest rather than absorbed into your nightly rate.
See how bookings are priced →- Added direct answers covering the current rate, what MAT applies to, and who pays it.
- Rate updated to 6% following the 1 August 2026 reversion from the temporary 8.5%.
BC moved short-term rental regulation from the municipality to the province: a principal-residence requirement in most communities, a provincial registry, and a duty on the platforms to enforce both.
Alberta is the loosest short-term rental regime of the four big provinces — no provincial licence, no principal-residence test — which puts the whole of the compliance burden on the city and the tax.
Quebec put the enforcement duty on the platforms: a listing without a valid registration number is one the platform is not allowed to publish, and the fines for publishing it anyway are aimed at the platform as much as the host.
La France superpose trois régimes : la déclaration, qui est nationale ; le plafond de nuitées, qui dépend de la commune ; et le changement d'usage, qui ne concerne que les logements qui ne sont pas votre résidence principale.