Jessamine County, KY Short-Term Rentals: Taxes & Fees (2026)

The rule sits in Jessamine County Code § 35.05, the section on the annual budget and transient room tax for the joint tourist commission. It directs the Nicholasville City Commission, the Wilmore City Council and the Jessamine County Fiscal Court to fund the Commission by imposing a 3% transient room tax on the rent for every occupancy of a suite, room, cabin, lodging, campsite or other accommodation furnished to transients for consideration. The wording is not limited to hotels. It covers any other place where accommodations are regularly furnished to transients, and it reaches any person that facilitates the rental by brokering, coordinating, or in any other way arranging it. A host who lists a cabin, a lodging or a campsite, and anyone who arranges the booking for that host, falls inside that language.

Where the rental sits decides who collects. Inside the City of Nicholasville the city alone collects and enforces the tax. Inside the City of Wilmore the city alone does it. Everywhere outside both cities, subsection (A)(4) creates the 3% tax and the County of Jessamine carries the sole responsibility for collection and enforcement. Money collected by the county is paid over to the Commission within 30 days of collection. The collecting entity, or an agent it designates in writing, is authorized to examine the books, papers and records of any accommodation business required to file a return, both to test a return that was filed and to compute the tax owed when none was filed.

The tax does not apply to an apartment supplied by an individual or business that regularly holds itself out as exclusively providing apartments. The code defines an apartment as a room or set of rooms in an apartment building, fitted especially with a kitchen and leased as a dwelling for a minimum period of 30 days or more. Proceeds are tourism money: a portion can finance facilities useful in attracting tourist and convention business, and the balance goes to the purposes in KRS 91A.350.