Burlington, WI Short-Term Rentals: Taxes & Fees (2026)

Section 286-2 of the room tax article defines HOTEL or MOTEL broadly as a building or group of buildings in which the public may obtain accommodations for a consideration, and it expressly lists inns, motels, hotels, bed-and-breakfast establishments, tourist homes, tourist houses or courts, lodging houses, rooming houses, summer camps, apartment hotels, and resort lodges and cabins alongside any other building or group of buildings in which accommodations are available to the public. That sweep captures short-term rental arrangements marketed to travelers even when the operator does not call the property a hotel.

The definition carves out one key exception: accommodations, including mobile homes as defined in Wis. 0435(1)(d), rented for a continuous period of more than one month fall outside the definition, as do accommodations furnished by a hospital, sanatorium, nursing home, or a qualifying nonprofit religious, charitable or educational corporation. Section 286-2 pins down that one-month line with its own definitions: ONE MONTH means a calendar month or 30 days, whichever is less, counting the first day of the rental but not the last, and TRANSIENT means any person residing for a continuous period of less than one month in a hotel or motel as the section defines it.

Read together, these definitions mean a short-term rental host renting rooms or a whole property to guests for stays under a calendar month or 30 days is furnishing accommodations to a transient in a hotel or motel for purposes of the article, and § 286-3 imposes the City's 8% room tax on those gross receipts the same as it does on a traditional hotel.