Tax revenue from thousands of such units across the city soared by 72% last fiscal year — totaling $9.6 million — over the year before, according to city officials.
Short-term rentals, booked through digital platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, are usually houses or condominiums that owners rent out overnight but not less than 12 hours.
City Council passed several changes to its STR ordinance in 2024, including higher permit fees and a new way to collect taxes from owners — many of whom hadn’t made their tax payments. Airbnb and Vrbo agreed to automatically collect taxes from STR operators and hand the revenue to the city. The two sites host roughly 90% of short-term rental bookings in the city.
The change went into effect in February 2025, almost eight months after City Council changed the ordinance — which was five months longer than originally expected.
But the city is still chasing after owners with unpaid tax bills from past years.
And a recent internal audit scolded two city departments — Development Services and Finance — for not properly managing the short-term rental program to ensure all taxes are collected. Auditors examined how the departments performed between October 2023 and February 2025.
The audit said Development Services wasn’t adequately researching and identifying which properties need to adhere to STR regulations.
It also found that Avenu, a third-party company the city uses to track STRs, was not sending notice letters to owners who delayed reporting taxable revenue. Notices must be sent before the city can revoke an owner’s permit to operate. In a sample of 20 properties, auditors found that in at least 16 permits should have been revoked but could not be because no notices had been sent.
Also, the city was not confirming that STR revenue reported by operators was accurate, and it wasn’t properly monitoring collection of past-due hotel-occupancy taxes.
There are 3,350 STRs with permits in San Antonio and about 1,000 operating without permits, Development Services Director Amin Tohmaz told City Council’s Audit Committee on Wednesday.
The city said in a response to the audit that Avenu now sends letters in a timely fashion, and the city is meeting monthly with a law firm to collect more overdue taxes through lawsuits and injunctions.
It is unclear how much STR operators owe in past taxes. City Auditor and Finance Department representatives couldn’t give four members of the Audit Committee a total Wednesday.
Councilman Marc Whyte called on the city to continue trying to collect delinquent taxes because of major budget deficit that San Antonio is facing.
“Before we even look at raising taxes on the people, we’ve got to be doing this kind of work to figure out where we are not collecting the revenue that we should be because these budget deficits and shortfalls would not be as great as they are if we were collecting some of this revenue,” Whyte said.