Kenai Peninsula Borough, AK Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

Kenai Peninsula Borough Code § 5.18.100(A) levies a consumer's sales tax of up to 3 percent on all retail sales, rents and services rendered within the borough, and that is the only tax lodging pays here: there is no separate transient occupancy or bed tax on the books. Because the tax normally caps at $500 of any single transaction under § 5.18.430(A), the code adds a lodging-specific rule at § 5.18.430(D): each night's rental of each individual unit of temporary lodging is treated as its own separate transaction, so the per-transaction cap resets nightly and per room rather than applying once to a whole stay.

The section is explicit that booking an entire lodge or hotel to one group for a multi-person overnight stay does not change this: the tax still runs per unit, per night. Operators must hold a borough certificate of registration under § 5.18.300 before taking a single reservation, display it at the place of business under § 5.18.310, and file quarterly sales tax returns under § 5.18.500 covering gross lodging receipts. This tax applies only to lodging booked outside SOLDOTNA, KENAI, HOMER, SEWARD, SELDOVIA and KACHEMAK; each of those cities may separately levy its own sales tax under § 5.18.100(B), collected on top of any city rate.

Enforcement runs through the borough mayor's office and finance department, not through a hotel-specific inspector, since Title 8 (Animals) is reserved and the borough has no building code covering lodging structures outside the cities.