Free Vermont Rental Application Fee Receipt

Vermont is one of the few states that answers the application-fee question with a flat prohibition rather than a cap or a refund mechanism, and that makes the page you are reading an unusual one: there is no arithmetic to get right, no ceiling to stay under and no clock to meet. What there is instead is a classification problem and a set of operational consequences that most landlords have not thought through. The prohibition itself is one sentence. Since 1 July 2025, 9 V.S.A. § 4456a(a) has provided that a landlord or a landlord’s agent shall not charge an application fee to any individual in order to apply to enter into a rental agreement for a residential dwelling unit. The sentence immediately after it is the one that gets dropped from every summary: the subsection shall not be construed to prohibit a person from charging a fee to a person in order to apply to rent commercial or nonresidential property. So Vermont has not banned the application fee. It has banned the application fee on residential dwelling units, and it has said so in a way that leaves the nonresidential fee expressly intact. For a landlord with a single apartment the distinction is academic. For anybody letting mixed-use premises, storefronts with a flat above, seasonal or transient accommodation, or space that is not a home at all, the distinction is the whole question, and it has to be settled before a listing goes up rather than after an applicant has paid. Two further consequences follow from a ban that says nothing about screening. The first is financial: you may still run a credit or background check on a residential applicant, and you now absorb its cost as an operating expense, which changes how you price a vacancy and how many applicants you are willing to screen. The second is procedural, and it is in subsection (b): to run that check you must accept any of three identifiers, and you may not require a Social Security number or refuse an application for the lack of one.

Fill in the fields below and the generator produces a dated PDF you can print, sign and give to the applicant, keeping a copy for your file. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields you leave blank print as a dash so you can complete them by hand.

Watch: Vermont Rental Application Fee Receipt explained

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The generator above produces a dated record of an application and any money attached to it. Vermont prescribes no form for this, so what you get is not a statutory form and is not captioned as one. It records the parties and the unit; how the unit is classified — residential dwelling unit, or commercial or other nonresidential property — and the facts you are relying on for that; whether any application fee was charged to apply for a residential dwelling unit; an amount and a date only where the property is commercial or nonresidential and the saving clause preserves the fee; the identification you accepted; the screening company used; the criteria applied; and the outcome. Two things it deliberately has no field for. There is no fee line for a residential dwelling unit, and there is no refund block — a refund position would imply a fee may be taken so long as it comes back, and on a residential dwelling unit in Vermont there is no lawful fee to refund. Those absences are the design, not an omission. In Vermont it is doing an unusual job, so use it deliberately. On a residential dwelling unit there should be no application fee to receipt at all, and the document’s value is as a dated statement that none was charged, alongside the screening detail that supports your decision. On commercial or nonresidential property, where the saving clause preserves the fee, it does the ordinary job of receipting money taken. One thing it does not do. It does not decide the classification question for you, and it does not print the statutory text, because a number or a rule fixed into a form is a number or a rule that goes stale in it. Nothing is stored and there is no charge. Fields left blank print as a dash.

• What the unit is, and why. Residential dwelling unit, or commercial or nonresidential property. The prohibition and its saving clause both turn on this and nothing else.
• That no application fee was charged for a residential dwelling unit. To any individual, at any stage of applying, by you or by your agent.
• What every applicant-facing charge was for. A charge is identified by what it is taken for, not by the word printed next to it on your intake form.
• What your agent or letting platform charges applicants. The section binds a landlord’s agent, so a charge you never see is still a charge made in order to apply for your unit.
• That the applicant was offered all three identification routes. Unexpired government-issued identification in original or copy, an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or a Social Security number.
• That no Social Security number was required, and no application refused for want of one. Subsection (b)(2) prohibits both, and a mandatory field on a form is a requirement in practice.
• Your screening record for each applicant. What was ordered, from whom, when, and what it cost you — the cost is now yours, and it is still worth tracking per applicant.
• The criteria you applied, written down before you applied them. The ban removes the fee, not the need to be able to explain a decision.
• Your adverse-action record where a consumer report drove a rejection. Federal consumer-report law applies alongside § 4456a and is unaffected by it.
• Any local requirement you are also meeting. Vermont municipal ordinances were not researched for this page and may impose duties it does not describe.

• Describing the rule as a general Vermont ban on application fees. It reaches a residential dwelling unit, and the same subsection expressly preserves a fee to apply for commercial or nonresidential property.
• Relying on guidance written before 1 July 2025. The prohibition arrived with the 2025 amendment. Older material describing a lawful residential application fee in Vermont is describing superseded law.
• Assuming your agent’s charge is not your problem. The subsection binds a landlord or a landlord’s agent, so a manager’s or a platform’s processing charge on your residential unit is within its reach.
• Renaming the fee. Nothing in the retrieved text turns on the label. The prohibition is on a fee charged in order to apply, and a differently-titled charge taken at the same point in the process is doing the same thing.
• Charging only unsuccessful applicants, or only successful ones. The prohibition protects “any individual” applying, so neither carve-out exists.
• Classifying by the lease form or the street rather than by use. § 4451(3) asks whether the building or part of it is used as a home, residence or sleeping place by persons maintaining a household.
• Reading the § 4452(a) list as seven items ending at the campground. There are ten. The omitted three are occupancy without right or permission by a person who is not a tenant, and two further lodging exclusions — General Assistance or Emergency Assistance temporary housing and federally funded Emergency Rental Assistance, and a placement in a hotel, motel or lodgings paid for by a hospital or a designated agency in connection with health care treatment or recovery.
• Carrying the rooms-tax condition across every lodging exclusion. It belongs to paragraph (4) alone. Paragraphs (8) and (10) each apply “regardless of whether the occupancy is subject to a tax levied under 32 V.S.A. chapter 225”, so an unpaid rooms tax is not evidence that the chapter reaches that letting.
• Structuring an arrangement to land inside an exclusion. § 4452(a) applies its list “unless created to avoid the application of this chapter”, which is an anti-avoidance rule written into the exclusions themselves.
• Treating the ban as a ban on screening. It is not. You may still order a credit or background check; what has changed is who pays for it.
• Making a Social Security number a required field. Subsection (b)(2) prohibits requiring one to complete a residential rental application and prohibits refusing an application for the lack of one; a form that cannot be submitted without it does both.
• Refusing a copy of an identification document. Subsection (b)(1)(A) says an original or a copy of any unexpired form of government-issued identification, and an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number is an accepted route in its own right.

Not for a residential dwelling unit. Since 1 July 2025, 9 V.S.A. § 4456a(a) has provided that a landlord or a landlord’s agent “shall not charge an application fee to any individual in order to apply to enter into a rental agreement for a residential dwelling unit”.

Three features of that sentence are easy to read past. It binds a landlord or a landlord’s agent, so the prohibition follows the letting activity rather than the person whose name is on the deed. It protects any individual who applies, so there is no distinction between an applicant you approve, one you reject and one who withdraws halfway through. And it bites at the moment of charging “in order to apply”, which is a point in the process rather than a category of document — a charge taken at that point is within the prohibition whatever the intake form calls it.

What the subsection does not do is regulate screening. It says nothing about credit reports, background checks, references or income verification, and it does not stop you obtaining any of them. The single practical effect is that the cost of doing so on a residential dwelling unit is now yours.

Commercial and nonresidential property, and the statute says so in the same subsection that creates the prohibition: it “shall not be construed to prohibit a person from charging a fee to a person in order to apply to rent commercial or nonresidential property”.

That is a saving clause, not an inference. It is the difference between a state that has abolished the application fee and a state that has abolished it for homes, and Vermont is the second. Most published summaries carry the first sentence and drop the second, which produces guidance that is wrong for every landlord whose portfolio is not purely residential.

Read together, the two limbs make the character of the property the operative fact. Not the applicant’s circumstances, not the rent, not the length of the term, not how many units you own. That is why the useful work happens before an applicant appears: a landlord who has classified each property once, in writing, has already answered the only question the subsection asks.

The chapter defines it at § 4451(3): a dwelling unit is “a building or the part of a building that is used as a home, residence, or sleeping place by one or more persons who maintain a household”. That is a use test, and it is worth taking apart.

“A building or the part of a building”. A part qualifies. A single let room inside a larger structure, a converted floor, an apartment above a shop — each is capable of being a dwelling unit in its own right even though the structure containing it is not residential as a whole. A landlord who classifies the building and stops there has not answered the question the definition asks.

“Used as a home, residence, or sleeping place”. The test is actual use. It is not the zoning designation, not the description in the listing, and not the form of lease your solicitor drew. Three alternatives are offered and only one needs to be satisfied, and “sleeping place” is the broadest of the three by some distance.

“By one or more persons who maintain a household”. This is the limb that does the work at the margins. It is the element that distinguishes settled occupation from transient use, and it is the reason short-stay and transient arrangements are treated separately by the chapter rather than being argued about under this definition.

The definition of “landlord” in the same section points the same way: § 4451(4) gives it as the owner, lessor or where applicable the sublessor of a residential dwelling unit or the building of which it is a part. The chapter is built around residential occupation throughout, and § 4456a(a) inherits that orientation.

§ 4452(a) lists them, and it prefaces the list with a condition that is as important as the list itself: the chapter does not apply to the listed occupancies “unless created to avoid the application of this chapter”. An arrangement engineered to land inside an exclusion is expressly outside it.

There are ten of them, and a summary that stops at seven is the version in wide circulation. The excluded occupancies are: occupancy at a public or private institution operated to provide medical, geriatric, educational, counseling, religious or similar service; occupancy under a contract of sale of the dwelling unit or the property of which it is a part, where the occupant is the purchaser or a successor to the purchaser’s interest; occupancy by a member of a fraternal, social or religious organization in the portion of a building operated for that organization’s benefit; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or lodgings while that occupancy is subject to the rooms tax; occupancy by the owner of a condominium unit or by the holder of a proprietary lease in a cooperative; rental of a mobile home lot governed by a separate chapter of Vermont law; transient residence in a campground, which the section defines at length as seasonal or short-term vacation or recreational property with cabins, tents, lean-tos or campsites for portable or mobile camping and travel units; transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or lodgings during the time the occupant is a recipient of General Assistance or Emergency Assistance temporary housing assistance, or occupancy in a hotel or motel funded by federal Emergency Rental Assistance administered by the Department for Children and Families through 30 September 2025; occupancy of a dwelling unit without right or permission by a person who is not a tenant; and transient occupancy by an occupant placed in a hotel, motel or lodgings in connection with health care treatment or recovery, where the occupancy is paid for by a hospital licensed under the hospital licensing chapter, an agency designated under the mental health chapter, or a specialized service agency operating under an agreement made under that chapter.

The rooms-tax condition attaches to one of those lodging exclusions, not to all three — and this is where a careful reader goes wrong. The fourth item above, the ordinary transient hotel, motel or lodgings exclusion, applies “during the time the occupancy is subject to a tax levied under 32 V.S.A. chapter 225”. The General Assistance and Emergency Rental Assistance exclusion, and the health-care-placement exclusion, each close with the words “regardless of whether the occupancy is subject to a tax levied under 32 V.S.A. chapter 225”. The condition is expressly disapplied in both.

The practical consequence runs in the direction that costs a landlord money. Somebody housing a General Assistance or Emergency Assistance recipient, or an occupant placed by a hospital or a designated agency, who reads only the fourth item will check whether the rooms tax is payable, find that it is not, and conclude that chapter 137 — and therefore the application-fee ban in § 4456a — reaches the letting. On the words of paragraphs (8) and (10) it does not. That is a question of fact about the particular occupancy, and it is not one this page can settle for you; what it can do is tell you the tax question does not decide it.

Two practical notes. First, an exclusion from the chapter is not a licence to charge; it means § 4456a does not reach the occupancy, and whatever other law applies to that occupancy still does. The mobile home lot exclusion is the clearest example: it points to a different chapter of Vermont law that was not researched for this page, so treat it as a signal to look further rather than as an answer. Second, the anti-avoidance opener means that classification decided for the purpose of dodging the section is the one classification that will not hold.

No. § 4456a(a) prohibits a charge, not an activity, and subsection (b) plainly assumes you will run checks — it opens with the words “[i]n order to conduct a background or credit check”. Screening remains available in full.

What changes is who pays, and that has consequences worth planning for rather than absorbing by surprise. Screening cost becomes a per-applicant operating expense, which means the shape of your funnel now has a price attached to it. A landlord who previously ran a full report on every applicant because the applicant paid for it will want to decide deliberately at what stage a full report is ordered: after a completed application, after a viewing, after basic criteria are met, or only on the applicant you intend to approve.

Two cautions on that redesign. Screening later in the funnel saves money but concentrates the decision, so your written criteria have to be doing more work earlier in the process. And whatever sequence you choose has to be the same sequence for everybody, because a screening step that is applied to some applicants and not others is a difference in treatment that you will be asked to explain. The fee has gone; the obligation to run a consistent process has not.

Any of three, and the applicant chooses. § 4456a(b)(1) provides that in order to conduct a background or credit check, a landlord “shall accept” any of the following: an original or a copy of any unexpired form of government-issued identification; an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number; or a Social Security number.

The wording repays close reading. “An original or a copy” means you cannot insist on sight of the physical document. “Any unexpired form” is broad and is limited only by the document being government-issued and current. And the three routes are alternatives — the subsection says “any of the following”, so satisfying one is satisfying the requirement.

Subsection (b)(2) then closes the obvious workaround. A landlord or a landlord’s agent “shall not require a Social Security number for the completion of a residential rental application or refuse to accept an application due to the lack of a Social Security number”. That is two prohibitions, not one: you may not make the number a condition of completing the application, and you may not reject an application because it is absent.

The place this usually goes wrong is not policy but software. An online application form with a mandatory Social Security number field requires one in the only sense that matters to an applicant, and a form that will not submit without it refuses the application for the lack of it. If your intake runs through a portal, test it: try to complete an application using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number and nothing else, and see whether the form lets you through.

That no application fee was charged — dated, naming the unit and the applicant. A record of a negative is worth more here than a record of a payment, because the compliance question in Vermont is whether money was taken, and the only cheap way to answer it later is to have written down at the time that it was not.

Beyond that, the document is a screening file. Record which company ran the report and when, the criteria you applied, the outcome, and the identification route the applicant used — that last one being the fact that shows subsection (b) was honoured. If you did take money lawfully, say plainly what it was for: a fee on a commercial or nonresidential application under the saving clause, or money taken after approval under the separate rules that govern deposits and rent.

None of this is prescribed. Vermont sets out no form, no wording and no retention period for an application record, and this page does not invent one. What it reflects is that the section states a prohibition without stating how compliance is evidenced, and in that situation a contemporaneous dated note is the cheapest evidence there is.

It does not displace them. § 4456a regulates a charge; the federal rules governing consumer reports regulate what you may obtain, what you must tell the applicant and what you must do if a report drives a rejection. Both apply at once, and the arrival of the fee ban changes nothing about the second set.

So the ordinary screening obligations continue: a permissible purpose for obtaining a consumer report, the disclosure and authorisation an applicant signs before you order one, and the adverse-action notice where information in a report contributes to a denial. A Vermont landlord who has stopped charging for screening still has to run the screening properly, and the removal of the fee removes none of the paperwork on that side of the process.

There is a quiet interaction worth naming. Because you now pay for reports, there is a temptation to screen fewer applicants, screen them later, or rely on documents an applicant supplies rather than on a report you order. Each of those is a legitimate business choice, and each changes what you are relying on when you make a decision. Whatever you rely on, apply it consistently and keep the record — the cost pressure created by the ban is a reason to tighten the process, not to informalise it.

§ 4456a is one section of the residential rental agreements chapter, and it is a narrow one: it governs the application stage and stops there. The money that may lawfully change hands once an applicant is approved is governed elsewhere in the same chapter and on different principles, and this page does not describe it. See Vermont security deposit laws for the money taken at signing and its return at the end of a tenancy.

What you may consider when screening an applicant, what a denial requires once a consumer report has driven it, and how the subsection (b) identification rules fit alongside the federal framework are all separate questions. Our guide to Vermont tenant screening laws covers that ground.

For the wider framework of the tenancy — notice periods, entry, habitability and termination — see Vermont landlord-tenant laws.

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