Taunton, MA Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

Section A500-7 of the Code of the City of Taunton, the Table of Statutes and General Laws Which Have Been Accepted, records that the Taunton Municipal Council accepted Chapter 64G, Section 3A, Acts of 1989, imposing a 4% local option hotel/motel excise tax, on March 28, 1989. The same table shows a second acceptance, listed under the general-law citation MGL c. 64G, § 3A and described as 'relative to the local room occupancy excise rate,' dated July 21, 2009, the year the Legislature amended the room occupancy excise statute to let cities and towns raise their local rate; the table records that Taunton acted on that authority but does not print the resulting percentage in its own text.

MGL c. 64G taxes the total amount charged for occupancy of a room in a hotel, motel, lodging house or bed and breakfast establishment, and since 2019 amendments the statute also reaches short-term rental operators and the intermediaries that book them. The excise is not billed or collected by the City of Taunton directly: operators and intermediaries remit it to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, which distributes the local-option share back to the municipality that accepted the tax. Taunton's own code contains no separate hotel licensing chapter that sets a distinct municipal lodging tax or per-room fee; the acceptances in § A500-7 are the only local record of the City imposing this excise, and current operators should confirm the combined state-plus-local rate with the Department of Revenue or the City Treasurer/Collector, since the 2009 table entry does not itself state the new percentage.