You can add taxes to your listings in Guesty, such as city, tourism, and goods and services taxes. They can be added to an individual listing or applied to all listings in your account automatically.
After you set up your default tax, you will either be able to add conditions to make sure you only tax the right reservations or choose which fees the tax should be calculated from. Tax conditions only apply to manual and direct reservations, which are reservations made through Guesty Booking Website, Guesty Booking Engine, or Guesty Booking Engine API. Tax conditions do not apply to reservations made through booking channels.
Follow the instructions below to add taxes to a listing.
Important:
Set up your default tax
Since we are still deploying our new dashboard, follow the instructions for "Legacy navigation" if your search bar is in a blue line above the top navigation bar.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector, and select Financials mode.
- Click Properties.
- Click the relevant listing. For a multi-unit, access the main settings: The tax will apply to all sub-units automatically.
- In the listing's menu, click Pricing & Policies.
- From the drop-down, select Pricing.
- Scroll down to the "Tax" section.
- To the right, click Edit.
- Make sure the Use your account's default settings checkbox is deactivated.
- Under "Tax type", set up your default tax settings:
- To the left, select the type of tax you want to add. We do not recommend using the "Other" type, since it does not sync to the booking channels and can only be used once per setup.
- In the middle, select whether the tax is fixed-amount or percentage-based, and select the default amount.
- To the right, select the quantifier, such as "per night" or "per guest". Vrbo only supports "per night" and "per stay" when adding a percentage-based tax.
- If Airbnb collects the tax directly from the guest and remits it to the authorities, you can activate the Display Airbnb remitted taxes for reservations checkbox and the tax amount will be deducted from the accommodation fare and added as a negative invoice item in Guesty.
- Click Save.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- Click Listings.
- Click the relevant listing. For a multi-unit, access the main settings: The tax will apply to all sub-units automatically.
- In the listing's menu, click Pricing & Policies.
- From the drop-down, select Pricing.
- Scroll down to the "Tax" section.
- To the right, click Edit.
- Make sure the Use your account's default settings checkbox is deactivated.
- Under "Tax type", set up your default tax settings:
- To the left, select the type of tax you want to add. We do not recommend using the "Other" type, since it does not sync to the booking channels and can only be used once per setup.
- In the middle, select whether the tax is fixed-amount or percentage-based, and select the default amount.
- To the right, select the quantifier, such as "per night" or "per guest". Vrbo only supports "per night" and "per stay" when adding a percentage-based tax.
- If Airbnb collects the tax directly from the guest and remits it to the authorities, you can activate the Display Airbnb remitted taxes for reservations checkbox and the tax amount will be deducted from the accommodation fare and added as a negative invoice item in Guesty.
- Click Save.
Based on your default setup, you will be able to add tax conditions or choose which invoice items to tax.
Add tax conditions
You can add tax conditions to make sure you only tax reservations that should be taxed. This means you won't have to adjust the guest's invoice after confirmation.
Guesty has four tax conditions, which can always be applied to fixed-amount taxes. Currently, the "length of stay" tax is the only condition that can also be applied to percentage-based taxes:
Step by step:
- Under the tax you have just set up, click Set additional conditions for this tax to make sure the tax will only apply to reservations that meet the parameters. If you do not set any conditions, the tax will apply to all of your reservations.
- Select the relevant condition based on your current needs:
- By night: Decide how much the tax will be based on the order of the nights in the reservation. For example, for nights 1 through 4, the tax will be $8, and from night 5 until the end of the reservation the tax will be $4.
- Date range: Decide how much the tax will be for different periods throughout the year. For example, between May and October, the tax will be $10, and between November and April, the tax will be $5.
- Night & Date: Combine the two previous conditions to decide how much the tax will be for specific nights in a reservation during a specific time of year. For example, during May and October, the tax will be $10 for nights 1 through 4, and $5 for nights 5 until the end of the reservation.
- Length of stay: Decide that reservations longer than X nights will not pay any taxes at all.
If the condition does not cover the entire reservation, the part that is not covered will be subject to the default tax from "Set Up Your Default Tax". For example, if you set up a "night" condition for nights 1-4 and the reservation has 8 nights, nights 5-8 will have the default tax amount.
Choose which items to tax
As explained, when you add a percentage-based tax, you need to decide which invoice items the tax will be calculated from.
Step by step:
- Under "Choose which invoice items to tax", select which invoice items the tax should be calculated from.
- Click Save.
Note:
Contact us to remove a tax from a confirmed reservation that should not be taxed, contrary to your regular setup.
Display Airbnb remitted taxes for reservations
All taxes should be defined directly in Airbnb, as taxes are not synced between Guesty and Airbnb. Reservations received from Airbnb will display the Airbnb tax breakdown in the guest invoice.
Airbnb remitted taxes are a specific type of tax that Airbnb automatically collects and passes on to local authorities. Since Guesty does not receive the full tax breakdown, there will be a discrepancy between what is shown on Airbnb and Guesty.
In these cases, you may turn the toggle on next to "Display Airbnb remitted taxes for reservations." If this option is activated, Guesty will calculate the remitted taxes for the listing's reservations once it arrives in Guesty, which will solve this discrepancy.
