Puerto Vallarta tourist tax will launch in 2026 despite a Supreme Court setback, raising questions over how the city can enforce a voluntary fee.
Mayor Luis Ernesto Munguía insists Puerto Vallarta’s controversial charge on foreign visitors is not dead, even after Mexico’s Supreme Court struck down this year’s version of the fee.
This week, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation invalidated the article in Puerto Vallarta’s 2025 Revenue Law that created a 1.25-UMA payment – about 141 pesos – for foreign nationals who use municipal services, goods and public spaces. Ministers concluded the rule violated principles of tax legality and legal certainty because it never spelled out which services or spaces justified the payment or how the amount was connected to their real cost.
The ruling came after a constitutional challenge filed by the National Human Rights Commission, which argued that the fee created legal uncertainty for visitors and opened the door to arbitrary charges at the local level. The court agreed and, in a unanimous vote, removed the provision from the 2025 law.
Puerto Vallarta tourist tax
Despite that setback, the mayor argues that the court’s decision only affects the 2025 section of the revenue law. He says a similar provision, recently approved by the Jalisco Congress, for the 2026 fiscal year will allow the city to begin charging the so-called voluntary fee starting January 2026.
According to Munguía, the city has not yet begun collecting the payment because the committee that will manage the resources has not yet been established. He says the committee will be created in the first week of January and will have about 13 members, including representatives from the business community, tourism authorities, the local hotel association, and the city council.
City hall has presented the charge as a way to shore up the budget in a destination where tourism is the main economic motor and where foreign visitors place extra pressure on services such as garbage collection, public safety and maintenance of beaches and public spaces. When the idea was first announced, the mayor publicly spoke of the possibility of raising around 300 million pesos per year. Now, he concedes there is no precise estimate of how much money could really come in.
What is clear is the amount each eligible visitor would be asked to pay. The fee is framed as a one-time contribution of 1.25 units of the federal Measurement and Updating Unit, or UMA, a reference figure used across Mexico to calculate fines, taxes and social benefits. At current values, that works out to roughly 141 pesos per person.
Local authorities say the charge will only apply to foreign nationals and will not affect Mexicans. Children, people with disabilities, guides and other tourism workers, cruise and airline personnel and foreigners with temporary or permanent residency in Mexico have been exempted in past versions of the proposal.
Legal questions still hang over the plan
The court’s decision focused on how the 2025 rule was written, not on how the city hoped to use the money. Ministers said the article failed to define which specific services or public spaces were covered, or in what circumstances a foreign visitor would be considered to have used them. The text also did not establish a clear link between the fee and the real cost of any particular service.
Those gaps were central to the court’s reasoning. Federal justices stressed that any local tax or fee has to meet basic standards of clarity, so that people can know in advance when they must pay, how much they owe and what legal basis supports the charge. In their view, Puerto Vallarta’s rule did not meet that bar. The court’s conclusion was echoed in an official summary shared through its social media channels.
The mayor maintains that the Supreme Court did not issue a blanket prohibition on collecting contributions from foreign tourists, but instead targeted the drafting of the 2025 article. In his reading, that leaves room for the municipality to move ahead with the 2026 version, which officials say will fund better public services and improved tourism infrastructure.
For now, though, there are still more questions than answers. City officials have yet to explain in detail how the fee’s voluntary nature will work in practice, who will be responsible for asking visitors to pay, or what will happen if people refuse. They also have not presented a public breakdown of the projects or services that would be prioritized once the money begins to flow.
What happens next will depend on how the 2026 law is written and whether it can survive the same kind of constitutional scrutiny that unraveled the 2025 article. If the wording remains vague, the city could face a new round of legal challenges. If it becomes more precise and better tied to specific services, Puerto Vallarta might still secure an extra stream of funding from the foreign tourists who help drive its economy.
Between now and January, the administration has set itself a tight deadline: build the new committee, design operating rules and prepare to explain the fee to the many people who visit the bay each year. Whether the “voluntary” label is enough to persuade travelers – and to satisfy the courts – will become clear only once the new Puerto Vallarta tourist tax is put to the test.
