Toronto Municipal Accommodation Tax: Late Filing, Quarter by Quarter

Every Toronto short-term rental operator has to file a Municipal Accommodation Tax report four times a year. Miss one quarter and the filing does not disappear. It sits outstanding, and if tax is owing, interest starts to run. The good news is that a late quarter is fixable. This guide goes quarter by quarter: the deadlines, what late filing actually costs, and the exact steps to get current again.

TL;DR

• Toronto MAT is 6% on stays that begin on or after August 1, 2026. A temporary 8.5% rate applied to stays from June 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026.
• Reports and payment are due within 30 days of each quarter end: April 30, July 30, October 30, and January 30.
• You must file every quarter, even with no rentals, and even if Airbnb collected and remitted the tax for you.
• Late filing and late payment are different problems. Interest at 1.25% per month applies to overdue tax payments, not to a late report on its own.
• The City can revoke your registration or deny renewal if you fail to file and remit. File the late quarter as soon as you notice it.

On this page:

• What Toronto MAT Is and Who Has to File
• The Four Quarterly Deadlines
• Q3 2026: The Rate-Change Quarter
• Late Filing Is Not the Same as Late Payment
• What Late Payment Costs: Interest, NSF, and Your Registration
• How to File a Late Quarter, Step by Step
• How to Fix a Wrong Report
• What Records to Keep for Each Quarter
• A Simple System So You Do Not Miss Again
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Toronto MAT Is and Who Has to File

The Municipal Accommodation Tax, or MAT, is the City of Toronto tax on short stays. In Toronto, a short-term rental is a home, or part of a home, rented for less than 28 consecutive days. Registered operators collect MAT from guests and remit it to the City.

The current rate is 6%. It applies to stays beginning on or after August 1, 2026. Before that, a temporary 8.5% rate was in place for stays from June 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026, to help cover the cost of hosting the FIFA World Cup. If you are working through an older quarter, use the rate that applied when each stay began, not the rate in place when you file.

MAT is separate from income tax and separate from HST. If you are registered for HST, MAT is part of the amount HST is charged on. The City gives this example in its own guidance: a $100 room charge plus $6 MAT is $106, and 13% HST on that is $13.78, for a $119.78 total. You pay the HST portion to the Canada Revenue Agency, not to the City. If your short-term rental income is below $30,000, you may not need to register for HST at all. Our guide to Airbnb tax rules for Ontario condo owners covers how MAT, HST, and income tax fit together.

One point causes most late filings: the duty to file is yours, even when someone else handled the money. Short-term rental companies can sign a Voluntary Collection Agreement with the City to collect and remit MAT on an operator’s behalf, and Airbnb does this for Toronto bookings. That covers collection and payment for those bookings. It does not remove your report. You still file for every quarter.

The Four Quarterly Deadlines

Toronto runs MAT on a fixed quarterly calendar. The report and any payment are due within 30 days after the quarter ends.

• Q1 — January 1 to March 31: due April 30.
• Q2 — April 1 to June 30: due July 30.
• Q3 — July 1 to September 30: due October 30.
• Q4 — October 1 to December 31: due January 30 of the next year.

That means the next deadline for most operators reading this is October 30, 2026, for the July to September quarter. After that, the Q4 report is due January 30, 2027.

Two habits make these dates easy to miss. First, the due date is the 30th, not the last day of the month, in January, April, July, and October. Second, the quarter is based on the stays and revenue in that period, not on when a platform happened to pay you out. Close the quarter first, then file. Do not wait for a payout that lands in the next month to decide which quarter a stay belongs to without checking your booking records.

If you had no rentals at all in a quarter, you still file. A zero-revenue quarter is a short filing, not a skipped filing. The same applies if every booking came through Airbnb. Skipping a quiet quarter is how one missed filing quietly becomes two or three.

Q3 2026: The Rate-Change Quarter

The July to September 2026 quarter needs extra care, because the rate changed in the middle of it.

• Stays beginning in July 2026 fall under the temporary 8.5% rate.
• Stays beginning on or after August 1, 2026 fall under the 6% rate.

For bookings handled by Airbnb, the platform applies the rate and reports its share directly, and you leave Airbnb revenue and Airbnb nights out of your own report, as the City’s filing steps direct. The split matters most for direct bookings and for bookings on any channel where you collect and remit MAT yourself. Price those stays by their start date, apply the right rate to each one, and keep a note in your records showing which stays you taxed at 8.5% and which at 6%. If the City ever asks how you built the quarter, that one note answers the question.

This is also the quarter where a rushed filing is most likely to be wrong. If you already filed Q3 using one flat rate for the whole quarter, read the correction section below. Corrections are time-limited, so do not sit on an error you already know about.

Late Filing Is Not the Same as Late Payment

Owners often treat a missed deadline as one problem. It is two, and they carry different costs.

A late filing means the report itself is outstanding. This can happen with no tax owing at all. If Airbnb collected and remitted MAT on all your bookings, or you had no rentals, you may owe nothing and still be late, because the report was never submitted. The fix is to file. Filing late does not make the duty go away, and there is no benefit to waiting for the next quarter to catch up.

A late payment means tax was owing and was not paid by the due date. This is the part that attracts interest. If you collected MAT on direct bookings and did not remit it, or your report shows a balance, the clock runs on that balance from the day after the due date.

Work out which problem you have before you panic or pay. Pull the quarter’s bookings, separate Airbnb bookings from everything else, and total the non-Airbnb revenue. If that total is zero, your job is a filing, not a payment. If it is not zero, your job is both: file the report, note the tax it calculates, and pay it.

What Late Payment Costs: Interest, NSF, and Your Registration

The City charges interest on overdue MAT at 1.25% per month. It starts on the first day after the payment was due and runs until the tax is paid in full. That is 15% over a full year, charged on the amount owing.

A worked example shows why small balances still matter. Say you had $10,000 in non-Airbnb revenue in a quarter at the 6% rate. The MAT owing is $600. One month late, the interest is $7.50. Three months late, roughly $22.50, before any further monthly charges. The dollars start small. The real risk is not the first month. It is a balance left for a year while quarters stack up behind it, each with its own interest clock.

Two other costs are easy to overlook:

• A $40 NSF charge applies when a MAT payment is not honoured by your bank for insufficient funds. Pay from an account you know can cover the amount, and pay a few days early, as the City advises, so the payment reaches the City before the due date.
• Your registration is on the line. The City states it may revoke an operator’s short-term rental registration, or deny a renewal, if the operator fails to file and remit MAT. For a condo owner, losing registration means losing the legal right to run short stays at all. That is a far bigger loss than any month of interest. Our Toronto Airbnb licensing guide explains what registration requires and what puts it at risk.

This page is general information, not tax advice. If you are several quarters behind, or the amount is large, a short call with an accountant who works with Toronto hosts is worth it before you file. Our guide to how long a Toronto Airbnb licence takes is a useful companion if a renewal is also coming due.

How to File a Late Quarter, Step by Step

The late process is the same online report as the on-time process. There is no separate late form. Work through it in this order:

1. Name the quarter. Write down the exact period you missed and its due date. If you missed more than one, list them oldest first and clear them in that order.
2. Build the quarter’s numbers. Total the revenue you collected in the period, and count the nights you rented the entire unit and any part of the unit. Leave out revenue collected by Airbnb and leave out Airbnb nights. Airbnb reports those to the City itself.
3. Open the City’s MAT report. Enter your short-term rental registration number in the STR-0000-XXXXXX format, then the government ID you used to register, either an Ontario driver’s licence or an Ontario photo card. If the form keeps returning an error with the correct details, call 311. If your ID changed since you registered, update that information first.
4. Enter revenue and nights. Use the totals from step 2. The report calculates the amount of tax owing. Make a note of that amount before you leave the page.
5. Pay any balance through your bank. Once the report is filed, pay through your financial institution by online banking, telephone banking, at a bank machine, or in person, using your registration number. The payee name is Short Term Rental Tax Toronto. Pay a few days ahead of any deadline you still control, and keep the bank confirmation.
6. Save proof of both halves. Keep the filed report details and the payment confirmation together for that quarter. A payment with no report, or a report with no payment, is only half fixed.

If every booking in the missed quarter came through Airbnb, steps 2 and 4 are short: no non-Airbnb revenue to enter, and no extra payment to make. File anyway. That filing is what closes the quarter.

Owners who would rather not run this four times a year often hand the calendar to a manager. When you compare services, ask who files MAT and who keeps the records. Our breakdown of Airbnb management fees in Toronto shows what full service should cover, and our Toronto Airbnb management page explains how we handle it.

How to Fix a Wrong Report

A filed report can be corrected, but only within a window. The City accepts corrections for the current reporting period and the previous reporting period only. A corrected report replaces the one you submitted for that period.

That limit changes how you should act on a mistake:

• Caught it in the same quarter, or the one right after? File the correction promptly, with the right revenue, nights, and rate split.
• The error is older than that? The online correction route may no longer be open for that period. Call 311 and ask how the City wants it handled, and keep a record of who you spoke to and when.
• Not sure if the numbers are wrong? Check before the window closes. The rate-change quarter described above is the most likely place for a silent error in 2026.

Do not file a second, separate report for the same period and hope the City merges them. A correction replaces the original. Follow that process, and keep both the original figures and the corrected figures in your own files so the change is easy to explain later.

What Records to Keep for Each Quarter

The City requires operators to keep a record of all accommodation transactions for a reporting period, including revenue collected and any exemptions that applied. When a filing is questioned, records are the whole answer. Keep one simple folder per quarter with:

• Booking list for the quarter: dates, channel, nights, and whether the unit was rented whole or in part.
• Revenue per booking, split between Airbnb bookings and all other bookings.
• The rate you applied to each non-Airbnb stay, with a note for the Q3 2026 split between 8.5% and 6%.
• A copy of the MAT report you filed, and the tax amount it calculated.
• Bank proof of payment for any balance, showing the date and the registration number used.
• Any exemption you claimed, and the reason for it, in the same folder.

This is the same record set that makes your year-end taxes faster. If you run more than one unit, keep a folder per unit per quarter, not one mixed file. Mixing units is how revenue gets counted twice or missed entirely.

A Simple System So You Do Not Miss Again

Most late filings are not tax problems. They are calendar problems. A small system fixes them:

• Put all four due dates in your calendar now: April 30, July 30, October 30, and January 30. Add a reminder two weeks before each one, not on the day itself.
• Close the quarter in the first week. Pull bookings and revenue as soon as the quarter ends, while the records are fresh. Filing then takes minutes.
• File even in a zero quarter. Make “no rentals” a filing, not a skip.
• Separate the money. MAT you collected on direct bookings is the City’s money passing through your hands. Hold it apart from your payout spending until it is remitted, the same way careful owners handle HST.
• Check the rate when rules change. Toronto changed the rate twice around the World Cup period. A rate check at the start of each quarter takes a minute and prevents the most common filing error.

If you are already behind, use the same system in reverse: list every outstanding quarter, file oldest first, pay any balances, and save proof for each one. Then the calendar keeps you current. One caught-up afternoon is the whole job for most owners.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I file my Toronto MAT report late?
The report stays outstanding until you file it, so file as soon as you notice. If no tax was owing for that quarter, filing is usually the whole fix. If tax was owing and unpaid, interest applies to that payment. Continued failure to file and remit can also put your short-term rental registration at risk, including revocation or a denied renewal.

How much interest does Toronto charge on late MAT?
Interest applies to overdue MAT payments at 1.25% per month, starting the first day after the payment was due, until the tax is paid in full. That equals 15% over a full year. Interest applies to an overdue payment, not to a late report where no tax was owing.

Do I still have to file if Airbnb collects the MAT?
Yes. You must file a MAT report for every reporting period, even if Airbnb or another company collected and remitted the tax, and even if you did not rent the unit at all. In your report, you leave out revenue collected by Airbnb and leave out Airbnb nights, because Airbnb reports those to the City directly.

What are the Toronto MAT due dates?
Q1 (January to March) is due April 30. Q2 (April to June) is due July 30. Q3 (July to September) is due October 30. Q4 (October to December) is due January 30 of the following year. In each case the report and any payment are due within 30 days of the quarter end.

What MAT rate applies to the July to September 2026 quarter?
Both rates appear in that quarter. Stays beginning in July 2026 fall under the temporary 8.5% rate. Stays beginning on or after August 1, 2026 fall under the 6% rate. For Airbnb bookings, Airbnb applies and reports its share. For bookings where you collect MAT yourself, apply the rate by the stay’s start date.

Can I correct a MAT report I already filed?
Yes, but only for the current and the previous reporting period. A corrected report replaces the original for that period. If the period you need to fix is older than that, call 311 and ask how the City wants the correction handled, and keep a note of the call.