Rental Income Tax on a San Miguel de Allende Property

Rent from a San Miguel de Allende property is taxed by the federation, by the state of Guanajuato and by the municipality of Allende, under three separate statutes, on three different bases, with three filing calendars and three enforcement bodies. No page we could find assembles all three. The pages that rank are either generic Mexico tax explainers written by accountants who have never opened the Guanajuato Ley de Hacienda, or brokerage FAQs written by firms that take twenty to thirty percent of the rental stream and so have a reason to keep the cost stack short.

This page walks the whole chain, from gross booking revenue down to what the owner keeps, and out to what a US or Canadian return does with the same money. Where a figure is verified against primary law, we say so. Where it comes from an advisory blog, we say that too.

The pivot: tax residency, not nationality and not your visa

Mexican tax law does not care what passport you hold. It cares whether you are a Mexican tax resident. Title IV of the income tax law governs residents, Title V governs non-residents, and the two produce materially different outcomes on the same property. The clearest illustration sits on the exit side: the principal-residence exemption in Article 93 fracción XIX is a Title IV provision, so a foreign national who is a Mexican tax resident can use it and a Mexican national who is not a tax resident cannot. Nationality is irrelevant. Residency is decisive.

Tax residency is also not immigration residency. Holding a residente temporal card does not make you a Mexican tax resident. We have not verified the statutory residency test in the Código Fiscal de la Federación and so publish no test here. Every rate below hangs off this question, and it is the first thing to settle with a Mexican contador, before the letting starts rather than after.

The five layers

All five rest on statute. What the statute does not settle is how the non-resident rate and the platform withholding rates fit together for an owner abroad who lets through a platform.

The rate we would not print, now read in the statute

There is a figure in wide circulation: 25 percent of gross rents, with no deductions, for a non-resident landlord in Mexico. Earlier versions of this page declined to publish it, because we had verified that number only in Article 160, which governs the sale of property and not the letting of it.

The article that governs rents is Article 158 of the Ley del Impuesto sobre la Renta, in Title V, and it says the same thing in its own words: “el impuesto se determinará aplicando la tasa del 25% sobre el ingreso obtenido, sin deducción alguna, debiendo efectuar la retención las personas que hagan los pagos.” Where the person paying is resident abroad, the owner pays by a return filed within fifteen days of receiving the income. So the circulating figure is right, and it now has a citation.

Corrected 5 October 2026: earlier versions of this page said the rate on rents paid to a non-resident could not be verified against the statute, described the 11,248.64 pesos of Article 24 fracción XIII inciso d) as a one-time authorisation of the change of land use to lodging, and deducted the state lodging tax from the host’s revenue. Article 158 of the Ley del Impuesto sobre la Renta sets the non-resident rate at 25 percent of the income obtained with no deductions. Fracción XIII of the municipal law is headed “Por aviso de terminación de obra y autorización de uso y ocupación”; the change of land use is fracción XII. Articles 53 and 54 of the Ley de Hacienda para el Estado de Guanajuato have the host pass the lodging tax to the guest on a base that excludes IVA. For 2026, Article 25 fracción IX inciso c) of the Ley de Ingresos de la Federación also has platforms withhold all of the IVA where they pay into an account abroad. The revenue figures were moved to AirROI’s window to July 2026. All read 5 October 2026.

The digital platforms regime is also in the statute. Article 113-A fracción II of the Ley del Impuesto sobre la Renta requires a platform to withhold 4 percent of an individual host’s lodging income, computed without IVA. Where the host has not given the platform an RFC, Article 113-C fracción IV raises the withholding to 20 percent. On IVA, Article 18-J fracción II inciso a) of the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado requires a platform resident abroad without a Mexican establishment to withhold 50 percent of the IVA it collects on an individual host’s behalf, which at the 16 percent rate is 8 percent of the consideration, and 100 percent where the host has given no RFC. Article 1o.-A BIS applies the same obligations to platforms resident in Mexico. For 2026 there is a third case: Article 25 fracción IX inciso c) of the Ley de Ingresos de la Federación has the platform withhold 100 percent of the IVA where it deposits the amounts in bank or deposit accounts abroad, which reaches an owner paid into an account at home.

The statute also settles whether the withholding ends the matter. It does not: under Article 113-A the ISR withholding “tendrá el carácter de pago provisional”, a payment on account. Article 113-B lets a host treat it as final only where their platform income in the previous year was no more than 300,000 pesos and any other income is salary or interest, in exchange for claiming no deductions, filing a notice with SAT within 30 days of the first platform income, and keeping the election for five years.

One limit remains. Articles 113-A to 113-C sit in Title IV of the law, which under Article 90 governs individuals resident in Mexico and non-residents only through a permanent establishment here. We found no platform provision in Title V, the title for non-residents, whose own rule for rents is the 25 percent of Article 158. How the two fit together for a non-resident owner letting through a platform is not something these articles settle, and we do not guess at it.

The furnished-rental trap: when does rent carry IVA?

This is the layer most owners get wrong, and it is the plainest text on this page.

Article 20 fracción II of the Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado exempts from IVA the letting of buildings or parts of buildings used exclusively as a dwelling. Then it removes the exemption: the provision does not apply to property supplied furnished, or used as a hotel or casa de hospedaje.

The trigger is furnishing, not lease length. An unfurnished long let of a house in Guadalupe is IVA-exempt. The same house let furnished on a twelve-month lease is taxable at 16 percent. Nothing about the tenancy has changed except the sofa. Most guidance flattens this into a claim that long-term letting is exempt and short-term letting is not, which is wrong at the statutory level and understates the tax on a very common San Miguel arrangement, the furnished annual let to a snowbird or a remote professional.

IVA is also not a tax on the owner. The supplier collects it from the customer and remits it. Whether it reduces your take depends on whether your rate is quoted inclusive or exclusive of it. Where a platform’s headline price is the all-in figure the guest pays, a sixth of what looks like revenue was never yours.

Three statutes, three different triggers

Each of the three governments defines the taxable activity differently, and the definitions do not line up.

A furnished annual let therefore sits unambiguously inside the IVA charge and ambiguously inside the other two. We found no sourced definition of where an ordinary furnished tenancy stops and hospedaje begins, and will not invent one.

Guanajuato’s four percent, and why the platform is probably not covering you

Article 55 of the Ley de Hacienda para el Estado de Guanajuato sets the lodging tax at 4 percent of the total consideration, excluding food, related services and IVA. The November 2025 consolidated reform did not alter it.

Since a reform published on 30 December 2022, Articles 53 and 57 make digital platforms the statutory withholding agents. That sounds like relief for the host, and it is not unconditional. Article 57 relieves the host only on amounts collected through the platform, and only cuando éstos realicen el entero correspondiente, when the platform actually makes the payment. Income obtained without platform intermediation stays the host’s liability in every case.

That condition matters in 2026, because Guanajuato says the platforms are not paying. In July 2026 the state’s Subsecretario de Finanzas e Inversión publicly accused Airbnb of three and a half years of non-compliance, said the company has no registered fiscal domicile in the state, and said it refuses to let Finance review its calculations or share host identity data. A June 2026 tax-vendor guide separately lists Guanajuato among the states where Airbnb does not handle lodging tax retention. Airbnb has published no response we could locate and the reporting is single-outlet, so we present it as one side of a live dispute. But an owner reading Article 57 cannot assume the relief has been earned on their behalf.

If it falls to you: register in the Registro Estatal de Contribuyentes within ten business days of starting operations under Article 58, then file definitive monthly returns by the 22nd of the following month under Article 57, including nil returns for months with no income, until you file deregistration notices.

On rate, Guanajuato sits mid-table.

Guanajuato applies the same 4 percent to hotels and to platforms, unlike Quintana Roo, which charges platforms more than hotels.

The municipal layer is a flat fee, and flat fees are regressive

Article 24 fracción XIV of the 2026 San Miguel de Allende revenue law sets the specific land-use permit for property destined to lodging or temporary accommodation at 45,000 pesos per fiscal year. Not once. Every year. A separate charge of 11,248.64 pesos under fracción XIII inciso d) is for the notice of completion of works and authorisation of use and occupancy of a lodging property. It is not a change-of-use fee, which fracción XII charges at the amounts in fracciones VI, VIII and X, and the law does not say that an owner converting an existing house owes it.

Two corrections. Press reporting on 19 July 2026 gave the annual figure as 40,000 pesos. The statute says 45,000 and the statute governs. And the fee has not risen since 2023, when it went up from 10,000 pesos, so the narrative of continuously escalating municipal pressure is not supported by the tariff. What has escalated is enforcement.

Because the charge is flat rather than proportional, it lands hardest on the smallest listings, the opposite of how every yield model in this market presents it.

The stack, itemised

Below is the walk from gross booking revenue to what is left, at four points on AirROI’s revenue distribution for San Miguel de Allende, for the twelve months to July 2026 (updated 12 September 2026, read 5 October 2026). Management is at 20 percent of the scraped revenue, the rate one named local operator publishes. The permit converts at the European Central Bank reference rate of 17.4601 on 23 July 2026. Withholding is at the 4 percent rate Article 113-A sets for hosts with an RFC, on income excluding IVA. The 16 percent IVA and the 4 percent lodging tax are charged to the guest on the price before tax, and AirROI does not say whether its revenue includes them, so the table carries both readings. Everything here is arithmetic applied to sourced inputs, not a measurement of any real property, and the revenue inputs are scraped listings rather than verified bookings.

Four things that table is not. It is not net income: predial, utilities, insurance, repairs, cleaning, furnishing amortisation, platform fees and vacancy are all still to come, and one commission-adjacent publisher puts combined operating costs at 55 to 65 percent of gross. It does not settle which reading is right, because we cannot source whether the revenue figures are inclusive or exclusive of the taxes charged to the guest. It assumes an RFC: at the 20 percent rate Article 113-C sets for hosts without one, the median listing keeps about 3,392 or 5,098 rather than 5,098 or 7,145, and at the 25 percent of gross that Article 158 sets for a non-resident, about 2,859 or 4,458. And it ignores home-country tax.

The bottom row is the finding. At the bottom quartile the permit alone takes 49 percent of the scraped revenue. A flat 45,000 peso charge is close to irrelevant to a top-decile listing and close to fatal to a small one. No yield model published in this market shows that, because none of them includes the permit at all.

The same publisher that gives the 20 to 30 percent short-term management band gives 8 to 12 percent for long-term letting. An unfurnished long let also drops the IVA charge, sits outside the lodging tax, and needs no permit. Against measured occupancy estimates running from 29.4 to 44 percent depending on whose scraper you believe, the arithmetic case for short-term letting here is weaker than the marketing.

Can Mexican tax on rent be credited at home?

This page publishes no US or Canadian rate, threshold, form number or deadline. We set out the Canadian treatment of the same rent, from primary sources, on our page on Canadian tax on Mexican property, and what letting does to a US owner’s eventual sale on our page on US taxes when selling Mexican property. What we can set out here is the shape of the problem, which is where most owners are misled.

The same rent appears on two returns, and relief from taxing it twice runs through a foreign tax credit. That credit does not map cleanly onto the Mexican stack, for four structural reasons.

First, only income taxes are creditable. Of the five layers above, IVA is a consumption tax, the Guanajuato lodging tax is levied on the consideration for lodging rather than on income, and the municipal permit is a land-use fee and not a tax at all. Adding your Mexican outgoings together and calling the sum foreign tax paid will overstate the credit, possibly by most of it.

Second, a withholding on gross is not a tax on net. Mexico may take a share of every peso that arrives. Your home return taxes what remains after management, repairs, insurance, interest and depreciation. Where the gross-basis Mexican tax exceeds the home-country tax on the net, the excess is refunded by neither government. That stranded amount is a recurring cost of the structure and appears in no brokerage projection we have seen.

Third, credits are generally limited to the home-country tax on the same category of income, and rental losses are often restricted at home, so a credit earned in a year of Mexican tax can be unusable in it.

Fourth, currency. Peso receipts have to be converted, and the two available measures are routinely conflated.

Note the direction. The peso was stronger on the spot market in mid-2026 than either annual average, and the 2025 average is weaker than the 2024 average, the opposite of the direction the spot rate moved across the same period. Quoting one measure as if it were the other produces a wrong number, in either direction depending on which way you err.

Whether the tax treaty between Mexico and your country changes any of this is a question we have not researched and will not guess at. It belongs with a cross-border accountant who files in both jurisdictions.

The 2026 enforcement turn

For most of the past decade the honest description of this stack was that almost nobody paid it. The municipality collected 175,442 pesos from the lodging land-use charge in all of 2022, from roughly 243 registered properties in the historic centre, a fraction of what those registrations alone should have produced at the fee then in force. Its 2026 revenue law budgets 3,374,592 pesos as its share of the state lodging tax, covering hotels and platforms together, in a market carrying somewhere between 1,843 and roughly 4,200 listings depending on whose count you use.

What is changing is enforcement, not rates. In approximately the week of 13 July 2026, Guanajuato’s tax administration sent around 5,000 personalised invitation letters to owners letting through digital platforms, asking them to register and pay the 4 percent lodging tax. The director described this first phase as amigable, with no sanctions, and indicated a second phase of fiscal audits is possible for those who do not comply.

The detail that matters most is the period targeted: 2021 and 2022, before the December 2022 reform that moved the withholding obligation onto the platforms. For those years the liability sat with owners directly, with no platform to point at. Any foreign owner letting here in 2021 or 2022 has historical exposure that no platform withholding covers, and the campaign has been reported only in Spanish.

What we could not establish

Naming these is more useful than filling them with plausible numbers.

• How the 25 percent of Article 158 and the platform withholding regime fit together for a non-resident owner. Articles 113-A to 113-C sit in Title IV of the income tax law, and we found no platform provision in Title V, which governs non-residents.
• How a non-resident owner obtains an RFC. Registration generally requires proof of a Mexican domicile, and we found no statutory or SAT source resolving that circularity.
• Whether a furnished long let constitutes hospedaje for the state tax, or temporary accommodation for the municipal permit. Neither statute sets a threshold.
• Any independent confirmation that Airbnb does not withhold the Guanajuato lodging tax. The claim rests on one tax-vendor guide and the state’s own accusations.
• The peso amounts of the penalties. Article 34 of the state short-term rental law carries no fine schedule and cross-references the tourism law, whose amounts we could not source.
• How many San Miguel properties hold and pay the 45,000 peso permit. The compliance rate is the most decision-relevant regulatory number in this market and nobody publishes it.
• Whether the permit transfers to a buyer on sale. Nothing addresses this anywhere, and if it does not convey, every property marketed as a turnkey rental carries an undisclosed year-one cost.
• How a US return treats the rent itself, year by year. Our US page covers the sale of a let property, including depreciation recapture, not the annual rental income; the Canadian treatment of rent is on our Canadian page, and neither is repeated here.

The standing position

This is published research, not legal or tax advice. Your notario is the legal authority on your transaction, and a Mexican contador is the authority on your filings. Where this page and either of them differ on your property, they are right and we are general.

We earn no commission on any San Miguel de Allende transaction, take no share of any rental stream, and have no financial interest in whether yours closes or lets. That is the only reason this page can afford to tell you that a flat municipal permit eats nearly half the gross revenue of a bottom-quartile listing, and that the most quoted rate on this subject is one we could not verify.