Super quick overview of tax

In AU and NZ prices include GST. If the host is GST registered, they pay tax on the amount they receive for the booking.

In the US, tax is added on to the cost of a booking. We pay the tax for a booking on behalf of the host.

The US tax system is complex! Most states have multiple sales taxes (state, county, city, etc) and special lodging taxes for accommodation providers. Some taxes are only applied to a percentage of the total price 🤯

It would be almost impossible to keep up with changes to tax rates ourselves, so we are now using a service called Avalara to calculate the tax for US booking.

When a booking is created, we send the amount and number of nights to Avalara. They send back a tax amount and details of the rates that were applied.

We present the tax amount and details to the customer on the payment page.

The tax rate is then stored against the listing so we can use it to estimate the tax when searching for a listing or choosing dates.

Soon we will also commit the tax transaction to Avalara, which will file them on our behalf.

The End

(that wasn't so bad, was it?)