The Obligation Is Not Optional
When the Servicio de Administración Tributaria audits a rental portfolio, it is not looking for intent. It is looking for documentation: does the income match the CFDI? Does the IVA remittance match what the platform withheld? Does the monthly ISR provisional match the annual declaration?
Three obligations govern rental income in Mexico. Each has its own statutory basis, its own withholding logic, and its own documentation requirement. Operators who manage them in separate, disconnected systems — or, more commonly, in spreadsheets — carry the exposure.
Obligation 1 — IVA (Ley del IVA, Art. 1)
The Ley del Impuesto al Valor Agregado subjects most commercial activity to a 16% rate. For rental income, the treatment depends on use:
Short-term and vacation rental: Subject to IVA at 16%. Since the Miscelánea Fiscal reform that took effect January 2020, digital platforms operating in Mexico (Airbnb, VRBO, and comparable services) are required to withhold and remit IVA on behalf of hosts registered as personas físicas. This withholding does not extinguish the host's obligation to issue a CFDI — it changes who remits the tax, not whether the transaction is documented.
Long-term residential lease: Generally exempt from IVA under Art. 20, Section I of the Ley del IVA. The exemption applies to habitational use; mixed-use properties require proportional treatment by component.
Commercial lease: Subject to the standard 16% rate. No platform withholding applies; the lessor must charge, collect, and remit IVA directly.
The practical consequence: a portfolio with three property types — vacation units on Airbnb, a long-term residential block, and a ground-floor commercial space — carries three distinct IVA treatments simultaneously. A single flat rate applied across the portfolio is an error.
Obligation 2 — ISR (LISR, Arts. 114–116 and the Digital Platform Rules)
The Ley del Impuesto Sobre la Renta taxes rental income for both personas físicas and personas morales, at different rate schedules.
Platform withholding (Miscelánea Fiscal Art. 113-A to 113-C): For income collected through a digital platform, the platform withholds provisional ISR at a rate that varies by monthly gross income bracket. The withheld amount is a provisional payment — it is credited against the annual declaration, not the final liability. In most cases, the effective annual rate will exceed the provisional rate, meaning a balance is owed at year-end.
Direct rental income: Where no platform intermediates the booking, the operator must file and pay ISR provisionals monthly (Art. 116 LISR). The provisional is calculated on actual rental income received, net of authorised deductions.
Authorised deductions: Maintenance and repairs, property tax (predial), insurance premiums, platform commissions, depreciation on the building (not the land), and professional fees — each backed by a valid CFDI. A deductible expense without a supporting CFDI is not deductible.
The risk: an operator mixing platform bookings with direct bookings who fails to separate the income streams will either double-count withholdings or omit provisional obligations. SAT's pre-filled annual declaration (the Declaración Anual for personas físicas) flags discrepancies between reported income and platform-reported withholdings automatically.
Obligation 3 — CFDI (Código Fiscal de la Federación, Art. 29)
The Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet is Mexico's mandatory electronic invoice. Under Art. 29 of the Código Fiscal de la Federación, any entity receiving payment for a taxable service must issue a CFDI. For rental income, this covers every lease payment received, including amounts collected through a platform intermediary.
The CFDI must be issued through an Authorised Certification Provider (PAC — Proveedor Autorizado de Certificación) and must contain the RFC of both parties, the breakdown of the net amount, the applicable IVA, and the CFDI use code (Uso del CFDI) declared by the recipient.
CFDI 4.0 (the current version, mandatory since January 2023) requires the recipient's full tax address on the document. Retroactively correcting a CFDI with an incorrect address requires cancellation and reissuance — a process that requires recipient consent and has a defined window.
Non-Compliance Exposure
The SAT's regularisation tools include monthly surcharges (recargos) at 1.47% on unpaid taxes (Art. 21 CFF), per-document fines for missing CFDIs, and presumptive income assessment when platform-reported withholdings exceed declared income. Criminal liability follows persistent material underreporting under Arts. 108–109 CFF.
These are not edge-case risks. The SAT's electronic audit infrastructure cross-references CFDI databases, platform withholding reports, and RFC activity automatically. A portfolio that has not reconciled CFDI issuance with declared income is visible before the audit letter arrives.
BasePro's Compliance Posture
BasePro's financial layer tracks IVA and ISR treatment at three levels — organisation defaults, property-type overrides, and booking-source exceptions — so that platform-withheld amounts and direct-income obligations are recorded separately from the moment of transaction, not reconstructed at month-end.
CFDI: BasePro is CFDI-capable. The platform exports the transaction data — amount, parties, tax breakdown — required for CFDI generation through an authorised PAC. Full native CFDI issuance is rolling out as part of the financial layer. Operators using BasePro today work with the CFDI export path; direct issuance is the near-term roadmap milestone. This is the honest picture.
Data residency and security posture: BasePro's infrastructure is GDPR-aligned — not GDPR-certified, but built to GDPR-level data handling standards, with an EU data-residency option. SOC 2 Type II is in progress, targeted for Q1 2027. The full compliance posture — sub-processor list, data processing agreements, incident response procedures — is documented in the Trust Center.
For operators whose procurement or legal team requires documentation before onboarding, the Trust Center is the authoritative reference.