Renting out a vacation apartment feels like pure hospitality at first: hand over keys, welcome guests, collect good reviews. In the eyes of German law, however, you are running a small lodging operation — and that status carries obligations many private hosts discover only when the first letter from the municipality lands in the mailbox. This post walks through the typical topics for hosts in Bavaria: guest registration, local tourist taxes, zoning restrictions, the business-registration question, and taxes — plus how to organize it all so it barely costs you time day to day.
Important note up front: This article is not legal or tax advice. Many of these rules are set locally, vary from one municipality to the next, and change over time. For binding answers about your specific situation, talk to your municipality (Gemeinde), the district office (Landratsamt), and your tax advisor.
The Meldeschein: since 2025, a duty mainly for guests from abroad
The best-known obligation comes from Germany’s Federal Registration Act, the Bundesmeldegesetz — and it recently changed. Since the start of 2025, the special lodging registration form, the Meldeschein, is required only for guests arriving from abroad: they complete and sign it on arrival. That covers not just hotels but, as a rule, a single vacation rental too, whatever platform the booking came through. Completed forms must be kept for a legally defined period and shown to the authorities on request.
For German nationals, the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act abolished this federal duty as of early 2025. Don’t close the file entirely, though: local recording rules can still exist alongside it, for visitor’s-tax purposes for instance. Ask locally what still applies at your address, and collect no more data than that requires. Since you rarely know a guest’s nationality at booking, keep one reliable routine for every arrival — one that is easy to digitize. More on that below.
Kurtaxe and tourism levies: one idea, many local variations
Many municipalities — especially in Bavaria’s tourism-heavy regions — charge a visitor’s tax (Kurtaxe), a tourism contribution, or a similar levy. The idea is the same everywhere: those who profit from tourism, or use the local infrastructure as guests, help pay for it. Everything else is decided locally and varies widely — whether a levy exists at all, how it is calculated, which exemptions apply, and how often it must be reported.
One thing matters most for you as a host: it is often you who must collect the levy from guests and remit it to the municipality, documentation included. So before you launch, ask your municipality in writing what applies to your address, and build the answer into your pricing and workflows instead of improvising at every booking.
Zweckentfremdung: is the apartment even allowed to be a vacation rental?
Before any forms comes a more fundamental question: may you rent the apartment short-term at all? Some cities with tight housing markets have adopted misuse-of-housing ordinances (Zweckentfremdungssatzungen). There, residential space may not be used permanently as a vacation rental without a permit — and violations can carry stiff penalties. Whether such rules apply at your location, and what they allow, varies from place to place; do not rely on anecdotes from other cities.
While you are at it, think through the related questions: Is the use permissible under building law? Do you need approval from the homeowners’ association or — for rented apartments — from your landlord? All of this is best settled before the first listing goes live.
Business registration: a question worth asking proactively
Whether renting out a vacation apartment requires registering a business (Gewerbeanmeldung) has no one-size-fits-all answer. It depends on the specifics — the scale of the operation and whether you offer hotel-like extra services. That is why the question belongs not in internet forums but with your municipality or the Landratsamt. Asking costs a phone call; a missed registration can cost far more.
Taxes: your agenda for the tax advisor
The tax side belongs in the hands of a professional — so no recommendations here, just the topics to bring to the conversation with your tax advisor:
- VAT and the small-business exemption: Short-term lodging is its own chapter of German VAT law. Clarify whether the small-business scheme (Kleinunternehmerregelung) is an option and what each path would imply.
- Income tax: How to properly declare income and expenses — from cleaning and platform commissions to furnishings.
- Private vs. commercial classification: with possible knock-on effects for other taxes and obligations.
- Records and receipts: which documents to keep, in what form, and for how long.
The point of the list is not to find the answers yourself — it is to make sure nothing gets forgotten in the meeting.
Clean operations: processes instead of paper chaos
The difference between hosts crushed by their obligations and hosts who barely notice them is rarely knowledge. It is process.
Obligations don’t shrink when you ignore them — but they get dramatically lighter once you turn them into a process.
- Digitize the Meldeschein. Have guests enter their details online before arrival and, where required, sign digitally. The data arrives complete and legible, guests are asked only what applies — and check-in time goes to hospitality instead of a clipboard.
- Build the Kurtaxe into your booking flow. As a fixed part of pricing and guest communication rather than a check-out surprise — and treat reporting to the municipality as a recurring task with a set date.
- One digital folder per obligation. Permits, correspondence with the municipality, applicable ordinances, and deadlines in one place — not scattered across inbox, drawer, and memory.
- One appointment per year. Local rules change. Once a year, check that everything you noted still holds at your location.
And once more, explicitly: this overview is no substitute for legal or tax advice — binding answers come only from your municipality, the Landratsamt, and your tax advisor. At RM Hospitality, these workflows are part of daily operations: our CENTCOM platform handles the digital Meldeschein and the processes behind it, so obligations run quietly in the background instead of running your day. More important than any tool, though, is the first step — and it is entirely analog: ask your municipality before your municipality asks you.