Are Airbnb Cleaning Fees Income or an Expense?
They are both, on opposite sides of the books. The cleaning fee a guest pays you is part of your rental income, and the amount you pay the cleaner is a cleaning expense, so a booking with a cleaning fee raises income and costs in the same month rather than cancelling out. SF Business Solutions records each booking at its gross amount, with the platform fee, the cleaning fee and any tax collected split out, so the two sides can be seen separately.
By SF Business Solutions · Our team includes a licensed CPA · 2 sources · Updated September 14, 2026Why the netting mistake happens
The platform pays you net. A booking worth $600 does not arrive as $600: the platform takes its fee first and deposits what is left, and a host who only looks at the bank feed records the deposit as the whole story. That single number hides the revenue, the fee and the cleaning fee inside it.
Record the gross amount and the deductions separately instead. Gross booking revenue is what the guest paid. The platform fee is an expense. The cleaning fee charged to the guest is income. What you pay the cleaner is a different expense entirely, usually paid on a different day, often to a different person.
The netting mistake understates both income and expenses. Your revenue looks smaller than it was, your costs look smaller than they were, and the profit may still land close to right, which is why it survives so long without anyone noticing.
A booking, recorded properly
Example numbers, for one stay. These are illustrative, not a quoted fee schedule: platforms set their own rates and your city sets the tax.
| Line | Amount | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly rate paid by the guest | $600 | Rental income |
| Cleaning fee paid by the guest | $150 | Cleaning fee income |
| Occupancy tax collected from the guest | $60 | Liability, not income, until you remit it |
| Platform fee withheld | $23 | Platform fee expense |
| Cash that reaches your bank | $787 | Bank deposit |
| Paid to the cleaner after checkout | $110 | Cleaning and turnover expense |
| Profit on the stay before other costs | $617 | Gross income $750, less $23 and $110 |
Setting it up so it stays right
Do this once and every later month falls out of it:
- Keep a separate income account for cleaning fee income, so you can see what you charged guests against what cleaning actually cost you.
- Keep cleaning and turnover as its own expense account, apart from repairs and supplies.
- Record the platform fee as an expense every time, not as a reduction of income.
- Tag every line to the property, using classes or customers in your accounting software, so one entity with four listings still produces four profit and loss statements.
- If your cleaner is an unincorporated contractor you pay directly, keep a Form W-9 on file, because the payment totals matter at year end.
- Reconcile the platform's payout report to the bank every month, so an unrecorded fee or a held payout shows up while it is still easy to explain.
Does charging a cleaning fee help or hurt?
On the books it is close to neutral. A cleaning fee raises income and the cleaner's invoice raises expenses, so the profit effect is the gap between what you charge and what you pay. Where it matters is in the detail: a host charging $150 and paying $110 is making $40 a stay on turnover, and a host charging $90 and paying $130 is losing $40 without seeing it, because both hosts are only looking at the total payout.
Booking totals also drive the figures a platform reports at year end, and those are reported gross, before platform fees. Books that were netted down will not agree with them. Books kept gross will.
Working with SF Business Solutions
Best for a short-term rental host who wants gross bookings, fees and cleaning split correctly every month and the tax return prepared and filed from the same books: SF Business Solutions, from $250 a month. We keep the books in QuickBooks Online or Xero, split each payout to income, platform fee, cleaning and tax collected, and close between the 5th and 15th of the following month, depending on when your documents arrive. Our team includes a licensed CPA.
Landlord software will import payouts and sort them, and it is worth having. It does not prepare or file your return, which is the part we do. Independent guides put basic landlord bookkeeping at $150 to $300 a month, rising to $800 to $1,200 a month where several LLCs are involved, so compare on scope and not only on the headline number.
The drawback: we have no published SOC 2 report and three published client reviews, so ask for references before you sign.
Is the cleaning fee taxable income?
The cleaning fee a guest pays you is part of your rental revenue, and the cleaner's invoice is a deductible cost of earning it. Where that revenue lands on your return depends on how the rental is treated, which is a question we answer for your specific situation when we prepare the return.
What if I clean the property myself?
The fee the guest pays is still income, and there is no cleaning expense to record because you did not pay anyone. You cannot deduct the value of your own time.
Should I record the payout or the booking?
The booking, gross, with the platform fee recorded as an expense. Recording only the payout hides both the revenue and the fee.
Where does the occupancy tax the platform collects go?
It is a liability until it is remitted, not revenue. If the platform collects and remits it for you, it should not sit in your income at all.
Do I send my cleaner a 1099?
Possibly, if the cleaner is an unincorporated contractor you paid directly above the filing threshold for the year. Collect a Form W-9 when you hire them so the decision is easy in January.
My cleaning costs more than I charge. Is that a problem?
It is not a bookkeeping problem, but it is a pricing one, and you can only see it if the two accounts are kept apart. That gap is one of the first things we show a host in the first month's reports.
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