Most owners who live abroad meet the Mexican tax system in the same place, and it is not a tax return. It is the gap between what the guest paid and what landed in the account. That gap is withholding, it is federal, and how large it is depends on one thing you can fix.
GEMA Properties is a private administration office. We hold the tax file of the house — the platform withholdings reconciled against the deposits actually received, the invoices issued and archived, the state lodging tax filed and paid on the state's date — and the month closes in one statement you can read line by line.
This describes how the obligations work and what this office does about them. It is not tax or legal advice, and none of it speaks to what you owe in the country where you live.
ISR and IVA on rental income in Mexico — income tax and value added tax — are withheld by the intermediation platforms on every booking and remitted to the Mexican tax authority before the money reaches you. Nothing about that is optional, and nothing about it is a penalty. What is negotiable is the rate, and it turns on whether a Mexican tax ID — the RFC — is registered on the platform against the property.
| Withheld from every payout | RFC registered | No RFC registered |
|---|---|---|
| Income tax (ISR) | 4% | 20% |
| Value added tax (IVA) | 8% | the full amount |
An owner who has never registered is not waiting for a problem to arrive: the problem has been arriving monthly, in the size of every deposit, and it is recovered only through a filing rather than by asking the platform.
Above the federal layer sits a state one: the lodging tax, known in Mexico as the ISH, charged where the house stands and filed every month. Which day of the month it is due depends on where you bought — the deadline runs from the twenty-second day in Guanajuato back to the seventeenth in Quintana Roo and Guerrero and the fifteenth in Baja California Sur, with the tax shown on the invoice and the records kept for five years. This page prints no rate: rates move by decree and the available sources do not agree across every state, so the rate for your house is confirmed in writing for your state before the calendar opens.
Two of those states are worth knowing by name before you buy. In Los Cabos, the Baja California Sur revenue law requires registration with the state taxpayer register within fifteen days of starting operations, and states that the tax is owed even where it was never passed on to the guest — meaning an unregistered house that has already hosted did not avoid the tax, it accrued it. In Guanajuato, where San Miguel de Allende sits, the authority has stopped waiting: in July 2026 the state tax authority sent personalised notices to 5,000 owners letting through platforms.
On the Caribbean coast — Tulum and Cancún — the lodging return falls in the first seventeen days of the following month. The registrations and permits that open that obligation in the first place are a separate matter, set out on compliance.
Three sets of hands touch short-term rental taxes in Mexico, and confusing them is how a year goes wrong. The platform withholds and remits. This office reconciles what it withheld against what actually arrived and issues and files the invoice for every item of income and every expense of the property; the state lodging tax is filed and paid on its own date, and you receive the period's breakdown and the payment receipt. Your Mexican accountant signs the monthly return, using the numbers this office has already squared.
The third set is yours and stays yours: whatever your own country asks of you for foreign rental income is your accountant's work at home, not ours. We will not file it, and we will not opine on it.
Keeping the tax file is part of full-service management for the house and is not billed separately. Concierge requests are the exception in the other direction: optional, quoted per use, charged to whoever uses them, and never folded into the fee. If the open question is which service this house actually needs, the services overview puts them side by side.
Register the RFC against the property on the platform, so the reduced rates apply from the next payout rather than from the next tax year. Ask for the platform's withholding certificate and have it reconciled against deposits every month, not once a year, because a deposit that does not match its booking is traceable in the month it happened and almost untraceable eleven months later. And keep the invoices where an inspection would look for them, because a withholding you cannot evidence is money that has already left.
Yes, on every booking: platforms withhold income tax and VAT and remit them to the tax authority. With an RFC registered on the platform the reduced rates of 4% income tax and 8% VAT apply; without it, 20% income tax and the full VAT.
Rental income tax in Mexico for foreigners follows the income and the property rather than your address, so for a house that earns the practical answer is yes. What you owe in your country of residence is a separate question, and it stays with your accountant there.
It is the Mexican electronic invoice, issued for each item of income and each expense of the property and kept on file with the movement it belongs to. It is the evidence layer: without it a withholding cannot be credited and a deduction cannot be proved.
It is a state tax on lodging, filed monthly wherever the house stands, and it is the owner's obligation rather than the platform's in most arrangements. Baja California Sur puts it plainly: the tax is owed even where it was never charged to the guest.
No, and we would not want to. Tax filing for Airbnb hosts in Mexico ends with your accountant's signature on the monthly return; this office keeps the property's file and reconciles it monthly, so that the numbers already agree with the deposits.
Not at the platform, and not backwards: what was withheld has left the payout and is recovered through the filing instead. That is why registering the RFC is the first thing done on a house that will be let, rather than the thing done after the first quiet month.
Tell us where the house is, whether it has ever been let, and whether an RFC is registered against it. We will answer in writing with what would be withheld at source, what the state would ask for each month, and what remains for your accountant to file.