Waukegan, IL Short-Term Rentals: Host Platform Liability (2026)

Sec. " The same section folds "online travel company" into the facilitator definition, and the general "owner" definition is written to expressly include facilitators among those entitled to a portion of the gross receipts from a room rental. That matters because Sec. 20-77(c) and (d) put the tax-collection duty on the owner: it is the duty of the owner of every hotel or motel to secure the tax from the rentor and pay it over to the city under procedures the local tax administrator prescribes, and the person collecting the rent must state the tax separately on the rent invoice at the time of collection.

Because a booking platform is defined as an owner, that collection and remittance duty runs to the platform, not just the individual host. Sec. 20-78 extends the same recordkeeping duty to owners, requiring daily records of rooms rented and tax receipts collected, open at all times to inspection by the city collector or an authorized representative; interfering with that inspection is itself unlawful under Sec. 20-78(b).