Porterville, CA Short-Term Rentals: Taxes & Fees (2026)

Porterville Municipal Code Chapter 22, Article III, the Uniform Transient Occupancy Tax Law of the City of Porterville, defines a taxable "hotel" broadly enough to reach most short-term rentals: Section 22-11 lists mobile homes and house trailers at a fixed location alongside inns and motels, and it excludes only a private home or vacation cabin whose owner is "not regularly engaged in the business of renting" it and rents it "only occasionally and incidentally" to personal use. A host who lists a property on a platform for repeated paid stays does not fit that narrow carve-out, so the eight percent (8%) tax imposed by Section 22-12 applies to the rent collected from each transient, defined as anyone occupying the unit for thirty (30) consecutive days or less.

The tax is a debt the transient owes the City, extinguished only when it reaches the operator or the tax administrator, currently the administrative services director. A host who remits the tax late does not just owe the underlying amount: Section 22-18 adds a ten percent (10%) penalty for the original delinquency, and Section 22-19 adds a second ten percent (10%) penalty if the remittance is still unpaid thirty (30) days after it first became delinquent, on top of interest under Section 22-21.