We investigate the tidal dissipation in Io’s hypothetical fluid magma ocean using a new approach based on the solution of the 3D Navier-Stokes equations. Our results indicate that Io may have experienced a period of intense tidal heating (104 TW) accompanied by excessive volcanism in the equatorial region, leading to catastrophic resurfacing of the pre-existing terrain. Tidal heating in Io’s magma ocean does not correlate with the distribution of hot spots, and is maximum for an ocean thickness of about 1 km and a viscosity of less than 104 Pa s. Due to the Coriolis effect, the k2 Love number can depend on the harmonic order. We show that the analysis of k2 may not reveal the presence of a fluid magma ocean if the ocean thickness is less than 2 km. If the fluid layer is thicker than 2 km, k20 ≈ k22/2 ≈ 0.7.