Council Bluffs, IA Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

Chapter 2.04 of the Council Bluffs Municipal Code, Transient Rental Guest Tax, taxes gross receipts from renting rooms, apartments or sleeping quarters to transient guests at hotels, motels, inns, public lodging houses, roominghouses and tourist courts, and extends to any other place where sleeping accommodations are furnished to transient guests for rent, whether or not meals are included, per Section 2.04.010. The only carve-out written into the ordinance covers sleeping rooms in dormitories and memorial unions at Iowa's state universities and colleges. Once the 7% rate takes effect, Section 2.04.010 requires it to stay in place for at least one year before the city council can change it.

The current rate traces to Ordinance 5480 (1999), amending the original Ordinance 4254 (1978); Section 2.04.040 fixed the operative rate's effective date at January 1, 2000. Unlike a typical city fee, Council Bluffs does not administer collection itself: Section 2.04.020 assigns collection and enforcement of the tax, along with any penalties and interest, to the Director of Revenue of the State of Iowa, acting under authority the state legislature vested in that office. Proceeds the city receives must be disposed of consistent with Iowa law, per Section 2.04.030, rather than deposited into a fund the chapter itself controls.

Because the ordinance defines covered lodging broadly as any place where sleeping accommodations are furnished to transient guests, a short-term rental booked through a platform that rents sleeping space to a transient guest for pay falls within the same 7% obligation as a hotel room, even though the chapter never uses the words short-term rental.