The Atlanta Hotel Tax Rate Is 16.9% Plus $5 a Night, and 14% Plus $5 at The Battery
By Matt Spaulding · November 10, 2026
Photo: Chasay1210, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hotel tax inside the City of Atlanta is 16.9% of the room rate plus $5 a night: 8.9% sales tax, 8% hotel tax and Georgia's flat $5 fee. All six booking screens we itemized line by line in the city added exactly that.
Reverb by Hard Rock Atlanta Downtown itemizes Occupancy Tax, State Tax and GA Hotel Fee $5. Hotel Phoenix itemizes State Sales Tax, Lodging Tax and Georgia Hotel Motel Fee $5. Neither prints a percentage, and on our arithmetic the two taxes work out to 8% and 8.9% of the rate at both. The other four screens print the percentages themselves. Hotel Indigo Atlanta Downtown lists Occupancy Tax 8%, State Tax 8.9% and Georgia Hotel Motel Tax 5.00 USD per night. At the Kimpton Shane Hotel it's City Occupancy Tax 8%, State Sales Tax 8.9% and State Hotel Fee 5.00 USD. The Wyndham Atlanta Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center lists Occupancy Tax 8%, Georgia State Tax 8.9% and GA State Hotel Motel Fee $5, and the Nobu Hotel Atlanta prints Sales Tax 8.9%, Occupancy Tax 8% and Georgia Hotel Fee $5.
Only 4 points of that 8.9% belong to the state, whatever the label says. The Georgia Department of Revenue's rate chart for 1 October to 31 December 2026 builds the City of Atlanta's 8.9% from the state's 4% plus local pieces that include MARTA, local option, education and Atlanta's transportation tax. Fulton County's base rate outside the city is 7.75%. The DeKalb part of Atlanta is 8.9% too, and the airport cities of Hapeville, College Park and East Point are at 8.75%, or 9% in the Clayton County part of College Park.
The 8% is the City's own hotel-motel tax (O.C.G.A. 48-13-51(b), per the Department of Community Affairs' hotel-motel tax report from August 2025). Georgia adds the $5, its State Hotel-Motel Fee, which the hotel collects for each night a room is rented.
The Battery: 14% plus $5, and a $3 line at one hotel
Both The Battery screens that itemized their taxes, two of the eleven we read there, charged 14% plus the $5 a night. The Wingate by Wyndham Atlanta Galleria/Ballpark and the Holiday Inn Express Atlanta Galleria-Ballpark Area in Smyrna use nearly the same labels: State Tax 6%, City Tax 8%, and a flat $5 that the Wingate calls Georgia Motel/Hotel Tax and the Holiday Inn Express calls Georgia Hotel Motel Tax. It's the same state fee you pay in the city, under another name.
Cobb County's sales tax on the state's chart is 6%: the 4% state rate plus education and SPLOST (a special-purpose county sales tax), with no MARTA share. In unincorporated Cobb the 8% is the county's hotel-motel tax (O.C.G.A. 48-13-51(a)5.1), and Cobb's cities, Smyrna and Marietta among them, levy their own 8% under the same law, so the rate is the same either way.
The Wingate's screen adds a fourth line, Cobb County Tax $3.00 flat, and the Holiday Inn Express shows none. A 2016 Department of Revenue letter ruling (LR SUT-2016-02) describes a Cobb County Recreational and Sports Tourism Service Fee of $3.00 per room night on hotels in the Cumberland Special Services District No. 1, in effect from 1 January 2015. The hotel collects it, and when it's stated separately it isn't subject to sales tax. The county code lets the board change the amount, and no county page we read gives a current figure or a list of the hotels in the district. When you compare two Battery hotels, check each screen for the $3.
Resort fees get taxed, and two screens did it differently
Georgia charges sales tax on a resort fee. Department of Revenue Policy Bulletin SUT-2018-02 lists a "Resort fee (also referred to as a facility fee)" as part of a room's sales price and "subject to tax, regardless of whether the charge is stated separately." It's the latest bulletin we found, and it says nothing about the 8% local tax.
The InterContinental Buckhead Atlanta lists its $35 Daily Amenity Fee as "$35 plus taxes ($40.92) per room per night". That's $35 times 1.169, so the fee carries the same 8% and 8.9% as a room in the city. Nobu shows its $35 Destination Fee as $38.11, billed at check-out. $35 plus 8.9% is $38.115, so that fee carries the sales tax and nothing else, even though Nobu charges the room the full 8.9% and 8%. We don't know why the same $35 comes out two ways.
Reverb, Hotel Phoenix, the Hotel Indigo, the Kimpton Shane, the Wyndham Buckhead, the Wingate and the Holiday Inn Express showed no resort fee at all on their booking screens. The other Buckhead fees are in our Atlanta hotel resort fee guide.
Hotel Phoenix and Centennial Yards
Hotel Phoenix's room descriptions on its booking engine mention views of "downtown Atlanta and Centennial Yards," and on 10 November its screen charged the same 8.9% and 8% as the rest of the city. The state's rate chart gives Centennial Yards its own code at 3.9%, and a 2023 bulletin (SUT-2023-01) swaps the 4% state tax and the 1% local option tax there for a 5% City infrastructure fee on qualifying sales made and received inside the zone. The bulletin says nothing about hotel rooms.
Long stays and the 31st night
The $5 stops on the 31st night in a row. The first 30 still carry it. The Department of Revenue's FAQ defines an extended stay as "the rental of a hotel room for 31 or more consecutive days to the same customer," and from the 31st day the fee "is no longer collected." The FAQ's word is "uninterrupted", and the department's hotel-motel fee rule (560-13-2-.01) treats an absence as a break, so checking out and back in starts the count again.
Sales tax runs longer: Policy Bulletin SUT-2018-02 says it does not apply to accommodations supplied to one person for 90 continuous days or more.
O.C.G.A. 48-13-51(h) gives the 8% its own long-stay exemption, and a 2025 bill, HB 474, proposed removing it. We couldn't read the law's current text or find out whether the bill passed, so past 30 nights, ask the hotel how it bills the 8%.
We read every screen in this guide on 29 October for a 17 November stay, and Reverb's and Hotel Phoenix's again on 10 November for 31 December. Their 8% and 8.9% come from that second read.
