CityofSantaBarbara
Month Ended November 30, 2023 and Month Ended December 31, 2023
The City of Santa Barbara collected $2.2 million in Transient Occupancy Taxes (TOT) for November 2023, the fifth month in the City’s fiscal year, and $1.8 million in TOT for December 2023, the sixth month in the City’s fiscal year. Year to date, the City has collected $17.4 million in overall TOT, of which approximately $16.2 million came from hotels and $1.2 million from short-term rentals. Year to date, total TOT revenues are coming in 4.1% below budget.
The Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) is a Tax on “Transient” guests staying in any hotel, inn, motel, or other commercial lodging establishment for a period of less than 30 days.
The City’s adopted TOT budget for all funds is $33 million, of which $27.5 million is budgeted in the General Fund.
View the Transient Occupancy Tax Table. The City’s TOT tax rate is 12%, of which 10% goes to the City’s General Fund and the remaining 2% goes to the Creeks/Clean Water Fund.
So far this fiscal year we are 4% under budget from project hotel tax revenue. By all means, let’s build more hotels since this seems to be going really well.
How do the City employees determine which Short Term Rental units do “not” have to pay TOT taxes? Is there a special avenue within the City that allows that?
With 4% under budget, is it possible there are illegals STVRs taking away from the hotels, resulting in lower TOTs? Certainly. With STVR’s taking away housing and inflating the residential housing market, shouldn’t we be taxing STVRs at a higher rate to encourage people to use hotels instead of neighborhoods and making up losses?