Mexico’s top court scrapped the Puerto Vallarta tourist tax, calling it vague and unconstitutional and leaving Jalisco without that new revenue.
On Monday, December 1, 2025, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice struck down a new fee aimed at foreign tourists visiting Puerto Vallarta, ruling that the charge violated basic constitutional guarantees of legality and legal certainty. The decision wipes out a municipal tax that had been in force since January and had quickly become one of the most talked-about measures in the Jalisco resort city.
The fee, approved by the Jalisco Congress at the request of Puerto Vallarta mayor Luis Munguía of the Green Party, charged foreign visitors over the age of 14 an amount equal to 1.25 times the daily Unit of Measurement and Update, or UMA. For 2025, that worked out to about 141 pesos per person for a pass valid for 365 days. The law framed the payment as a “right” for the use of municipal services, property, and public spaces.
Local authorities said the money would be funneled to a trust to reinforce security, cleaning, health, water, drainage and other basic services in a city that receives millions of international tourists every year. Officials also suggested the contribution would be “voluntary.” But the legal text itself used mandatory language, stating that foreign visitors “must” pay the charge, which raised immediate questions among lawyers and human-rights advocates about how the fee would work in practice.
Exemptions in the law covered children, foreign residents, cruise ship passengers, people with disabilities and workers in the tourism industry. Everyone else arriving as a foreign tourist and entering the municipality was expected to pay once per year, regardless of how long they stayed or where they were lodging. The rule was written into Puerto Vallarta’s 2025 Revenue Law as Article 80 Bis.
How the Puerto Vallarta tourist tax worked
Those details became central when the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) filed an action of unconstitutionality earlier this year. The commission argued that the Puerto Vallarta tourist tax discriminated on the basis of nationality and did not clearly define the taxable event, the legal basis or the benefit provided in exchange for the payment. In its lawsuit, the CNDH said the measure violated principles of legal certainty, proportionality and equity that govern public contributions in Mexico.
The Supreme Court agreed on the core legal defects. In its ruling, the Court concluded that the provision conflicted with the constitutional rights to legality and legal certainty set out in Articles 14 and 16 of the Federal Constitution. The justices found that the wording created indeterminacy about one of the essential elements of the tax: the event chosen by the legislature as the trigger for the payment. If visitors cannot clearly understand what service or specific use of municipal property they are paying for, the Court reasoned, the charge fails the test of legal clarity required for any tax or public fee.
The decision was unanimous and adopted without extensive public debate in the plenary session, underscoring how straightforward the justices saw the constitutional problem. By invalidating the article of the Revenue Law, the Court removed the legal foundation for the municipal fee and barred Puerto Vallarta from charging it going forward. The judgment also sends a signal to local legislatures that taxes dressed up as “rights” still have to meet strict constitutional standards.
For Puerto Vallarta’s city hall, the ruling closes the door on a revenue source that had been advertised as a way to offset the cost of tourism on local infrastructure. Municipal officials had argued that foreign visitors increase pressure on policing, waste collection, public health services and basic utilities, and that asking tourists to pay directly for those impacts was fair. Without this mechanism, the city will have to rely on its existing tax structure and intergovernmental transfers to fund those services.
What the ruling means for other tourist charges
The judgment does not touch Mexico’s existing federal entry fee for foreign visitors. Every tourist entering the country without a work permit already pays a federal charge for the immigration document known as the Derecho de No Residente, which for 2025 is set at around 860 pesos per person and is typically built into airline tickets or cruise packages. That revenue goes to the federal government and is separate from any state or municipal contributions.
It also does not cancel state-level tourist taxes that are already in force elsewhere. Quintana Roo, home to destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, charges foreign visitors a mandatory contribution commonly known as Visitax, calculated at a few hundred pesos per person and collected by the state tax administration. Those charges are based on state law, not on Puerto Vallarta’s now-invalidated municipal provision.
What the Supreme Court’s decision does make clear is that any attempt to layer a local tax specifically on foreign tourists will be closely scrutinized. Lawmakers will have to spell out, in precise terms, what is being taxed, on what legal basis and with what benefit in mind. They will also need to align those measures with broader constitutional principles on equality and non-discrimination, particularly when a tax targets only foreigners while Mexican citizens and residents use the same services.
For visitors planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta, the immediate outcome is simple. They will still face the federal entry fee charged by Mexico, and they may still encounter state-level tourist contributions if their itinerary includes destinations such as Quintana Roo. But the extra municipal charge that Puerto Vallarta tried to introduce for 2025 is now off the books. For a city that lives on tourism, the debate over who should pay for the true cost of that industry is far from over, but any future attempts will have to be written on a much firmer constitutional foundation.
