Nice tourist tax: do you still have to file when Airbnb or Booking collects it?

The platform collects, the host declares

For several years now, Airbnb, Booking.com and Abritel/Vrbo have charged guests the tourist tax (taxe de séjour) at booking and paid it straight to the local council. Many hosts conclude there is nothing left for them to do. In Nice, that is not the case.

The Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur, the metropolitan authority that collects the tax for Nice and 50 neighbouring towns, states it clearly in its instructions: stays booked through platforms must be declared online every four months, from your host account on the official tourist-tax portal. The platform pays; you declare your nights.

Why file a return if you owe €0?

The return lets the council reconcile two sources: what the platform paid over, and what you actually rented out. The portal calculates the tax for each stay, sees that the platform already collected it, and shows €0 to pay.

Without a return, the council cannot check those payments. French local-authority law (the Code général des collectivités territoriales) then allows it to assess the tax itself and to apply penalties for a missing or late return. A €0 return protects you.

What you enter for each stay

On the portal, under « Télédéclarer et Payer la Taxe » (file and pay the tax), each booking is one line: the option « Déclarer les nuitées des plateformes de location » (declare nights booked through a platform), the platform name, arrival date, departure date, total number of guests, number of exempt guests (under-18s, with the reason ticked) and the « Coût TTC du séjour » (cost of the stay including taxes).

According to the Métropole's instructions, that cost is the amount you received as host after service and cleaning fees were deducted. It is not the price the guest paid.

With twenty or thirty stays per period, the form takes an evening in French, and one wrong date or guest count throws the calculation off.

What about direct bookings?

A stay booked without a platform is declared as a standard stay: you collect the tax from the guest yourself and pay it to the council. The amount due is then no longer €0.

Let a tool fill in the return for you

Nuitées was built for exactly this. Upload your Airbnb and Booking exports, or the booking list from your property-management software (Smoobu, Superhote, Beds24). Nuitées works out the stay cost following the Métropole's rule, counts exempt children, splits stays that span two periods, then a robot fills in the portal stay by stay. You review and submit.

In short