There is a levy in Sint Maarten that most accommodation operators know about, most villa owners have never heard of, and almost nobody accounts for correctly, because it is not a tax on the business at all. It is a tax on the guest, which the business is required to collect and hand over.
Room tax, logeergastenbelasting, is charged at 5% from non-resident guests of hotels and other guesthouses, and that description extends to rentals of vacation villas and condos. Timeshare guests are dealt with differently, through a fixed fee of NAF 90, roughly USD 50, per week, generally collected inside the annual maintenance fee.
The reason this matters more than its size suggests is structural. Because the money was never yours, failing to collect it does not simply mean you owe a tax. It means you owe an amount you were supposed to have taken from somebody else and no longer can.
It Is Not the Same Charge as Turnover Tax
This is the single most common error, and it runs in both directions. Some operators charge one levy and treat it as covering both. Others charge both and cannot explain to a guest what the second one is.
They are genuinely different charges with different logic:
| Room tax | Turnover tax | |
|---|---|---|
| Who bears it | The guest | The business |
| What it attaches to | Accommodation supplied to a non-resident guest | Business turnover generally |
| The operator's role | Collecting agent | Taxpayer |
| Owed when the business loses money | Yes, it was never the business's money | Yes, it is charged on turnover not profit |
The practical consequence is that room tax should be visible. It belongs on the guest's invoice or folio as a separately identified charge, in the same way it appears on a hotel bill anywhere in the world. Burying it inside a nightly rate makes it impossible to evidence that it was collected, and impossible to explain to a reviewer why the amount remitted matches the nights sold.
Our guide to turnover tax covers the other charge in full, including why it compounds along a supply chain with no input credit.
Proposals have been raised to integrate room tax and car rental tax into the turnover tax system rather than running them as separate levies. That would be a significant simplification for operators, and it has not been the position historically. Treat the two as distinct charges unless and until you have confirmed otherwise, and confirm the current position with the Belastingdienst before changing how you invoice.
Who Has to Collect It
The description covers hotels and other guesthouses, and extends explicitly to vacation villas and condos. In practice that reaches a great deal further than the operators who think of themselves as being in the accommodation business.
It is worth establishing your position if you supply short-term accommodation to visitors in any of these forms:
- A hotel, guesthouse, inn or apartment hotel
- A villa let to visitors, whether directly, through an agent, or through a booking platform
- A condo unit let short term, including a unit inside a resort rental programme
- A property managed for an owner by a management company, where the question of who collects and remits has to be settled between you
The non-resident element is what defines the guest. The levy is described as being charged from non-resident guests, which means the status of the person staying is part of the test rather than an afterthought. Operators need a basis for how they establish and record that, because "we assumed everyone was a visitor" is not a record.
Do not assume a platform handles it
Booking platforms collect and remit certain local taxes in certain territories, under arrangements that vary and change. Whether any given platform does so for your property in Sint Maarten, and for which specific levy, is something to verify directly rather than infer from a line item on a payout statement.
Two failure modes follow from getting this wrong, and both are avoidable. Assuming the platform collects when it does not leaves an uncollected liability. Assuming it does not when it does risks charging the guest twice. Establish the answer in writing for each channel you sell through, and note that the answer can differ between your platform bookings and your direct ones.
Our guide to short-term rental tax covers the wider position for hosts, including the income tax treatment of the profit and what can be deducted.
Timeshare Sits Differently
Timeshare guests are dealt with by a fixed charge of NAF 90, approximately USD 50, per week rather than a percentage of a rate, and it is generally embedded in the annual maintenance fee rather than presented at check-in.
That structure creates a specific confusion worth naming. An owner who occupies their own week has usually already paid this through the maintenance fee. An owner who rents out their week to somebody else has stepped into a different activity, one that looks a great deal more like short-term letting, and the position on the letting is not automatically covered by having paid the maintenance fee. Given the size of the timeshare market on this island, this is a live question for a large number of owners who have never asked it.
Running It Properly
The operational discipline is simple and it is almost entirely about records:
- Show it separately on the guest's bill. A visible line item is the cleanest evidence that it was collected and the easiest thing to reconcile.
- Keep the levy out of your revenue. It is not turnover. Booking it into your sales figures overstates your revenue, distorts your turnover tax base, and makes the reconciliation between the two impossible to run.
- Record guest status on a consistent basis at booking or check-in, so that any exclusion you apply is evidenced rather than assumed.
- Reconcile monthly. Nights sold, room tax collected, room tax remitted. Three figures that should agree, checked while you can still remember why they might not.
- Settle it in your management agreements. Where an agent or management company handles bookings, the contract should say who collects, who remits and who carries the exposure if it goes wrong. Silence on this point tends to be resolved against the owner.
If It Was Never Collected
This is the uncomfortable scenario, and it is common among villa and condo owners who have been letting for years without knowing the levy existed.
The difficulty is that the guests have gone. You cannot go back to somebody who stayed two years ago and ask for a charge that should have been on their bill, which means the amount comes out of your own pocket rather than being passed on as it should have been. That makes historic exposure genuinely more painful than the 5% rate suggests.
What not to do is quietly start collecting from now and hope the earlier period is not examined. An abrupt change in treatment is itself a signal, the earlier periods are where the exposure sits, and accommodation businesses leave a clear record of occupancy across booking platforms, management reports and bank deposits. Take advice on the disclosure position before contacting anyone, because the sequence affects the outcome.
The Short Version
Room tax at 5% is charged to non-resident guests of hotels, guesthouses, villas and condos, and the operator collects and remits it. Timeshare uses a fixed weekly charge instead. It is a separate levy from turnover tax, it should appear separately on the guest's bill, and it should never sit inside your revenue.
Because the money was always the guest's rather than yours, the cost of not collecting it falls entirely on you, and it cannot be recovered from guests who have already left.
If you let accommodation in Sint Maarten and are not certain your levies are being collected and remitted correctly, talk to us. Confirm current rates, the guest status test and filing requirements directly with the Belastingdienst before relying on any figure here.