The 15.5% Philadelphia Hotel Tax Rate and the Levy That Takes the Bill Past 16%
By Matt Spaulding · November 9, 2026
Photo: John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The tax on a Philadelphia hotel room is 15.5%, or 16.25% at a hotel that passes on a 0.75% hotel-industry levy. Wyndham Philadelphia Historic District also charges the City and state taxes on the levy itself, which takes its total to 16.37%, and three more hotels land between 16.3% and 16.4%. We read the booking screens at 15 Philadelphia hotels for a night in November 2026. Two printed more than 17%, and neither said why.
The City's 8.5%
The City's hotel tax is 8.5% of the total amount you pay, and the hotel collects it. It has been 8.5% since July 1, 2013, according to the Revenue Department's rate history (revised June 11, 2026). Add the state's 7% and you get the 15.5% on the City's own page.
Two hotels we read came to exactly 15.5%. The booking screen at Morris House Hotel added 15.5% and no levy line. We have no room count for it, so we can't say whether it's small enough to sit outside the levy, which starts at 50 rooms. The Rooms at Fitler Club, which has 14 rooms, added 15.5% in its reservation summary and no levy line either. That summary only shows tax once you select a room, and the screen before it warns that some taxes may not be included.
Parking is taxed separately. The City taxes it at any parking facility, and valet has a tax of its own. Neither is in the percentages here.
Pennsylvania's 7%
The other 7% is Pennsylvania's hotel occupancy tax: 6% to the Commonwealth and 1% local in Philadelphia. The City's two pages don't agree on whose it is. The hotel tax page calls the whole 7% the Commonwealth's, and the sales and hotel occupancy page lists 1% City plus 6% Commonwealth. You pay 7% either way. The Kimpton Hotel Monaco Philadelphia prints it as State Tax 7%, beside City Tax 8.5%.
The 0.75% levy, and which hotels add it
The 0.75% is the Philadelphia Hospitality Investment Levy, PHiL for short, the name its corporation does business under. The City's ordinances call it the Philadelphia Hospitality Improvement Levy. It's a special assessment run by a hotel-industry nonprofit, so it isn't a City tax. Council created the levy's district in 2017 (Bill 170468). Collection began on January 1, 2018. Fourteen hotel general managers sit on its board with one City member, and the money goes on incentives for big events that fill hotel rooms, conventions and sporting events among them.
The levy's site, phlinvestmentlevy.org, gives the rate as 0.75% of room revenue. A 2022 ordinance (Bill 210683) lets the board set it as high as 1.5%, but no document we found shows it set above 0.75%.
Every Philadelphia hotel with 50 or more rooms is in the district. Smaller ones are not. Fitler Club is one of the smaller ones, and its screen showed no levy line. The assessment falls on the hotel, which may pass it to you as a separate line. If you're exempt from hotel occupancy tax, you're exempt from the PHiL too.
The Monaco and the Kimpton Hotel Palomar Philadelphia call it Tourism Fee 0.75%. Club Quarters Hotel, Rittenhouse Square lists a Phil Hospitality Improvement Levy, close to the ordinance name. Penn's View Hotel, with 49 rooms and 2 suites, 51 in all, labels its 0.75% only "other Tax", beside State Tax 7% and City Tax 8.5%.
At the Cambria Hotel Philadelphia Downtown Center City, which has 223 rooms, the total was the room plus exactly 16.25%, to the cent. The Windsor Suites folds everything into one line, City Tax, at 16.25% of the night, so the levy never shows on its own.
Where the levy gets taxed too: 16.37%
Wyndham prints Occupancy Tax 8.5637%, Sales tax 7.0525% and Levy Tax .75%. The first two are 8.5 and 7 multiplied by 1.0075, so the City and state taxes are being charged on the room plus the levy. That takes the total to 16.37%, about 0.12 of a point more than the Cambria's 16.25%.
The Rittenhouse says in its rate details that 16.37 percent tax is added to the room, and The Study at University City came to exactly 16.37% over the nightly price on all three rooms we read. At Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at Comcast Center, switching on the all-in price raised six rates by 16.3 to 16.4%, and all of the increase was tax.
The Rittenhouse's $35 Destination Fee is already inside the per-night price on its booking screen, but the tax on it isn't: 16.37% of $35 adds $5.73. The Palomar taxes its Guest Amenity Fee too, on a City Tax line of its own. Six of our Philadelphia hotels charge a nightly fee, and our Philadelphia resort-fee guide has what each one charges and calls it.
Lines the screens don't explain
The two hotels over 17% are both in Old City, along with five more of the 15 we read.
The Holiday Inn Express Philadelphia Penn's Landing showed four lines when we read it on November 9 for a stay on November 18: City Tax 8.5% (Occupancy Tax), Occupancy Fee 0.87% (Philadelphia Hospitality Investment Levy PHiL), State Tax 7% and Levy Tax 0.75% (Philadelphia Hospitality Levy). Together they came to 17.12% of the room charge, so all four stack. The PHiL has one published rate, 0.75%, and no published source we found explains a second PHiL line at 0.87%.
The Society Hill Hotel showed three lines for November 17 that add to 17.5%: "PA Sales Tax" at 8.5%, "PA Tax" at 7% and "Sales, Use, and Hotel Occupancy Tax" at 2%. The 8.5% line carries a state label at the City's rate. The 2% we can't place. No City or state page we read accounts for it.
The Independence Park Hotel charges the 8.5% Hotel Occupancy Tax and the 7% State Tax, then adds two small flat lines on a one-night quote: a Local Fee of $2.00 and a line labeled HPF at $5.20. The screen explains neither, so ask the hotel what each one is for before you book.
Long stays and two different day counts
The City's rule is written for hotels: a hotel can be excused from the 8.5% on a guest who has stayed 31 or more days in a row.
The state's line comes a day earlier. Its regulation (61 Pa. Code 38.3) counts a guest as a permanent resident once they've occupied a room, or had the right to, for 30 days in a row, and the 7% stops from the rental period in which day 30 is completed. Billed week by week, you still pay it on the weeks before that one. The days have to run together: move to another hotel and the count starts over, but changing rooms in the same hotel doesn't break it.
The PHiL, according to its FAQ, isn't collected on stays of more than 30 days.
The 2026 increase that never passed
The Mayor's proposed FY2027 budget, out on March 12, included a 2% increase in the hotel tax to pay for efforts to end street homelessness. A tentative deal with the hotel industry on May 27 cut that to 0.6%, still subject to Council and the Commonwealth, and The Inquirer reported it as 15.5% rising to 16.1%. Council passed the budget on June 11 without it, because none of the proposed taxes had the nine votes needed out of 17. WHYY reported that the Mayor signed about an hour later.
The City's hotel tax page still read 8.5% City and 15.5% in-state on November 9, 2026.
