CPA & Tax Services for Mount Pleasant, SC

Mount Pleasant is not Charleston on this, and the difference matters more than the tax treatment does. The Town requires a short-term rental permit and a business license, and a certificate of occupancy for the dwelling being rented. Permits are limited and administered by the Town, which has at points stopped accepting applications and run a waitlist instead.

The practical consequence: the usual federal questions — average stay, material participation, whether the loss is usable — are the second half of the problem. The first half is whether a permit can be had for that address at all. Do not underwrite a Mount Pleasant purchase on projected short-term rental income until the Town has confirmed in writing that you can get one. These rules change, so confirm the current position for your specific address rather than relying on this page or on what applied to a neighbor two years ago.

This one catches people. Under the Town's business license ordinance, a property owner leasing three or more residential dwelling units for thirty days or more is deemed to be doing business in Mount Pleasant, and a business license is required. It applies to ordinary long-term rentals, not just short-term ones. Owners who crossed the third-unit line quietly, one purchase at a time, are the ones most likely to have missed it.

South Carolina standardized local business license taxes under Act 176. Since 2022 every municipality that levies one runs the same license year, 1 May to 30 April, with renewal due 30 April and penalties available from 1 May. If you operate in both Mount Pleasant and the City of Charleston you may hold a license in each — but they now share a date, which at least makes the calendar simple. The tax questions underneath are the familiar ones: entity structure, reasonable compensation, estimates, and keeping the business return and your personal return telling the same story.

Mount Pleasant takes in a lot of people from somewhere else, and the year of the move is the one that goes wrong quietly. A part-year return in two states, income earned on both sides of the move, and a former state with an active interest in exactly when residency changed. That year is worth filing carefully rather than cheaply.