Albemarle County, VA Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

Albemarle County's transient occupancy tax, in County Code Chapter 15, Article 9, applies in Albemarle County outside Charlottesville and Scottsville to the use or possession of all rooms or spaces in hotels, motels, boarding houses, travel campgrounds, and other facilities offering guest rooms for fewer than 30 consecutive days. 8, the state's short-term rental marketplace facilitator statute, so booking platforms acting as accommodations intermediaries collect the tax alongside traditional accommodations providers. 1-605. The accommodations intermediary or provider must add the tax to the guest's bill, hold it in trust for the county, and file a report with the Director of Finance by the twentieth of each month covering the prior month's collections (§ 15-902).

In exchange for timely filing, an accommodations provider keeps a three percent commission on the tax it collects and accounts for, but no commission is allowed if any part of the tax due is delinquent at the time of payment. A provider whose sales are entirely facilitated by an accommodations intermediary can file an annual attestation instead of a monthly report. Records of gross receipts, the amount charged per rental, and the tax collected must be kept for three years and made available for inspection by the Director of Finance (§ 15-903).

Anyone going out of the lodging business must immediately report and pay any tax still due (§ 15-904), and the Director of Finance may promulgate rules to interpret, administer, and enforce the article (§ 15-905).