Worcester County, MD Hotels & Lodging: Transient Occupancy Tax (2026)

Subtitle VI of Title TR 1 (Hotel Rental Tax) lets the Board of County Commissioners of Worcester County, Maryland tax lodging inside a resort area. The tax reaches the amount paid for room or building rental by or for a transient at any hotel or motel and at any house, townhouse, apartment, condominium unit, cottage, cabin, manufactured home, rooming house, recreational vehicle, recreational park model or other structure used as a place of lodging. A transient is anyone who obtains sleeping accommodations for any period of less than four consecutive months.

A resort area is any part of the County the Commissioners specify that has an unusual influx of visitors and needs municipal services in unusual number or magnitude, and the definition specifically includes the Tenth Election District as it existed on January 1, 1971. The Code sets a ceiling and a process, not a current rate: the rate is a per centum of the rental fixed by resolution after public notice and hearing, never above six percent, and a rate above three percent needs every County Commissioner to agree.

Notice of the hearing runs at least twice in a newspaper of general circulation, with the first notice not less than ten days before the hearing, and must state the possible rates. If a charge bundles services with the room, the portion that is only room or building rental must be set out and billed to the transient as a separate item. After the County deducts a reasonable sum for the cost of imposing and collecting the tax, the share collected from lodging inside a municipal corporation in a resort area is paid over to that municipality, and the remainder goes to the County general funds. Collection and remittance duties sit in § TR 1-601(c) and (d).