The Permit and Tax Paperwork Behind a Legal Miami STR (and Where Turnovers Fit In)

Three separate governments have an opinion about your listing. The State of Florida, Miami-Dade County, and whichever city your front door happens to sit in. They don't talk to each other, they don't renew on the same calendar, and none of them will remind you when something lapses.

We clean turnovers across the county, so we see the paperwork side of this more than we'd like. Units where the Certificate Number fell off the wall months ago. Owners who assumed Airbnb was handling every tax. Here's the stack, in the order you should actually do it.

1. State: the DBPR public lodging license

• Who needs it: anyone renting for periods under 30 days more than three times a year.
• Cost: roughly $170 a year, plus a $50 application fee.
• The date to circle: the license expires every October 1, regardless of when you first got it. License in August and you're renewing six weeks later. That surprises people.

2. Check your building and your zone before you spend another dollar

This goes before the city paperwork because it can end the project entirely.

• Condo or HOA approval in writing. Not a verbal from a board member. The Declaration, the bylaws, the rental policy, and recent minutes are what actually govern you. In Brickell and downtown, most associations ban short-term rentals outright, and plenty of the rest enforce a 30-day minimum. A handful do allow daily rentals — Icon Brickell Tower 3, Fortune House, The Club at Brickell Bay, Four Seasons Residences. Building rules beat city rules every time.
• Zoning. In Estate and Low-Density Residential zones, the responsible party has to live on site more than six months a year.
• Your specific city. Coral Gables prohibits short-term rentals in single-family residential districts under City Attorney Opinion CAO 2013-055, and Code Enforcement and Police write citations on the spot — $150 a day first violation, $500 a day after. Bal Harbour allows them but caps you: a Vacation Rental Certificate for each rental period, no more than three per property per 12 months, plus a Resort Tax Certificate and 4% resort tax. Aventura and Bay Harbor Islands each run their own overlay.

3. City of Miami: Certificate of Use

• Apply online or in person at the Miami-Dade Permitting & Inspection Center.
• A physical inspection gets scheduled within 10 business days. That's the part hosts underestimate. You get a window, not a season, to make the unit presentable.
• On approval you get a Certificate Number, and it has to be posted prominently inside the unit. Posted. Visible. Not in a drawer with the WiFi password.

4. County: Local Business Tax Receipt

• Required alongside the Certificate of Use.
• Renewal runs October 1 through September 30 — the same October wall as the state license. Handle both in one sitting and you only have to remember one month a year.

5. The 12%, and whether you owe it directly

Total tax on a Miami-Dade short-term rental is 12%:

• 6% Florida state sales tax
• 6% county transient rental tax, which splits into 3% Convention Development Tax, 2% Tourist Development Tax, and 1% Professional Sports Franchise Tax

Registration is where hosts trip. If you rent solely through one platform that already collects and remits the Convention and Tourist tax — Airbnb, for most people — you don't have to register with the Miami-Dade Office of the Tax Collector yourself. Add Vrbo, or take a direct booking from a repeat guest, and you're a multi-platform host: you must register and remit. One direct booking changes the obligation. That's the whole rule.

Where the cleaning side actually matters

Enforcement escalated through 2024 and 2025. The county put dedicated staff on it and pulls platform data to find unregistered units, with fines up to $20,000 per violation. So the inspection-ready state of your unit isn't a once-a-year event.

What we build into the turnover checklist on licensed units:

• Certificate Number confirmed visible on every clean. Frames get knocked off walls by luggage. Guests take them down for listing photos. If it's gone, the owner hears about it that day, not at renewal.
• Humidity held in range. Average relative humidity here sits above 70%, and the rainy season runs June through October — one of the most persistent mold environments in the continental US. AC stays on between stays, target 45–55% indoors. If a room consistently reads over 60%, that room needs a portable dehumidifier. Musty linens are a review problem and a mold problem in the same breath.
• Bathrooms ventilated between guests rather than sealed up dark for four days in August.
• Sand handled properly on beachfront units. It migrates into baseboards and under bed frames, and an inspector notices before a guest does.

One scheduling note. If your inspection lands between December and April, build in drive time — snowbird season roughly doubles local traffic, and the causeways out to the barrier islands turn a 30-minute run into an hour. Book the clean the day before, not the morning of.

If you want the turnover handled with the posted-certificate and humidity checks written into the scope, tell us the building and the unit. We already know which towers run a 30-day minimum, and we'll say so before you sign anything. How we work is on the main page.