Richland County, SC Short-Term Rentals: Taxes & Fees (2026)

C. Code Section 12-36-920(A) imposes a 7% sales tax on gross proceeds from renting rooms, campground spaces, lodgings, or sleeping accommodations to transients, and the statute names "residence, or any place" alongside hotels and motels, so a whole-home Airbnb or VRBO listing in Dentsville, St. Andrews, or elsewhere in the unincorporated county owes the tax the same as a hotel room downtown. Two narrow exemptions exist: a home with fewer than six sleeping rooms on the same premises that the owner actually uses as their own place of abode is exempt, and rental income wholly excluded from gross income under Internal Revenue Code Section 280A(g), the rule that lets an owner rent a home for a short stretch each year without reporting the income, is also exempt.

A stay of 90 continuous days by the same guest is not "transient" occupancy and falls outside the tax entirely. Subsection (B) layers a separate 5% tax on "additional guest charges": room service, laundering and dry cleaning, in-room movies, telephone service, and meeting-room rentals, a defined list that does not automatically sweep in every cleaning or damage-waiver fee a host bills. Subsection (C) requires real estate agents, brokers, and listing services that remit the tax on an owner's behalf to notify the Department of Revenue when a previously listed rental property is dropped from their inventory.

Subsection (D) requires anyone who owns or manages units in more than one county or municipality to report the gross proceeds from each jurisdiction separately on the same sales tax return rather than lumping them together. Subsection (E) makes clear the tax reaches every person "engaged or continuing" in the business of furnishing accommodations for consideration, individual hosts included, not only incorporated lodging businesses.