Santee, CA Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

The Uniform Transient Occupancy Tax Ordinance, codified at Santee Municipal Code Chapter 3.16, taxes short-term hotel occupancy citywide. Section 3.16.020 defines a "hotel" broadly to include any hotel, inn, tourist home, motel, lodging house, rooming house, apartment house, dormitory, campsite, public or private club, or mobile home or house trailer at a fixed location outside a mobile home park. A "transient" is anyone occupying that space for 30 consecutive calendar days or less; the Tax Administrator, who is the City Treasurer, can treat even the first 30 days of a longer stay as taxable transient occupancy.

Section 3.16.030 sets the tax at 10 percent of the rent charged, whether or not that rent is actually collected, and makes the tax a debt the transient owes the City, extinguished only by payment to the operator or directly to the City. The operator must collect the tax at the same time as rent, state it separately from the room charge, and give the guest a receipt; an operator cannot advertise that it will absorb the tax itself. Operators must keep supporting records for three years for inspection by the Tax Administrator.

A hotel operator who is late remitting the tax owes an original delinquency penalty of 10 percent of the unpaid tax on top of the tax itself under Section 3.16.130(A), and the code layers on additional penalties for continued delinquency and interest until the balance is paid. All revenue collected under Chapter 3.16 goes into the City's general fund rather than a dedicated tourism account.