Adding Taxes

How do taxes operate?

• Different channels send taxes to Hostaway in different ways, making it difficult to compile these values for accurate financial reporting. This is where adding taxes to Hostaway's financial settings comes in handy. Therefore, before creating financial reporting for your listings, you should configure the taxes you would like to apply to those listings
• These settings will apply to all channels except for Airbnb and Booking.com where the Taxes mapping option should be used. We'll be the source of truth for Direct, Booking Engine, WordPress plugin, Vrbo, Google VR, and Marriott reservations, plus any add-ons entered in the guest portal. Therefore, setting up taxes will increase the total price for those channels
• Only new reservations will contain the tax after you "Add" it

Where are taxes used?

The taxes are used on two levels:

• Used to calculate taxes on reservation level for Hostaway channels, Vrbo, Google VR, and Marriot. For Booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb the tax percentage must be set in the channel
• Used to calculate taxes for Financial Reporting for all channels

How to add a Tax?

We do not import taxes from channels. That is why you should set them up in Hostaway. You will be able to add taxes in two different places in the Hostaway Dashboard, in Financial Reporting Settings or at a listing level in the Financial Settings tab.

Adding taxes from Financial Reporting Settings

To add your taxes in Financial Reporting Settings you should follow the next steps:

1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Financial Reporting > Settings
2. Click on the "Taxes" tab
3. Click on "Add tax"

4. Select the "Tax Type"

5. Select the "Amount, and if it is a percentage of a flat fee

6. If percentage, select if it should apply to the Base rate and/or cleaning fee

7. Select if you would like to apply a different tax amount based on the number of nights

8. Click on "Add"

• This configuration will apply to reservations imported or created after-tax creation. Reservations made before tax creation will not be calculated
• Editing an existing tax in Financial Settings will update all unchanged tax on the Listing level. If you have manually changed the tax for a listing, it can only be edited on a Listing Level. Editing on a Financial Settings level will not update this listing
• On Vrbo taxes are shown to guests as TAX even if there are multiple taxes, each and all of them will appear as TAX
• These taxes apply to all listings unless a different tax is set on the listing page
• You should receive information about the percentage of tax to be charged from your local tax authorities

Taxes mapping for Airbnb

Airbnb reports taxes with specific names. We offer a default mapping to our internal taxes, but you can change them at any time.

Changes will apply to any existing or new Airbnb reservation, including a reported tax. This is useful to show accurate data internally (in reservations, reports, etc.) but also externally (in the guest portal, for instance).

The list of taxes displayed will be based on the taxes reported by Airbnb in your reservations.

Adding taxes from Listings Financial Settings

To add a tax on a listing level you should follow the next steps: 

1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Listings
2. Select the Listing > Edit
3. Select the "Financial settings" tab > New taxes
4. Click on "+Add tax"
5. Select the "Tax Type"
6. Select the "Amount, and if it is a percentage of a flat fee
7. If percentage, select if it should apply to the Base rate and/or cleaning fee
8. Select if you would like to apply a different tax amount based on the number of nights
9. Click on "Save"

• New Taxes will be used to calculate the tax amount for external channels for the Financial Reporting. We will not take the tax info that external channels send to us since they are too different depending on the channel
• Taxes are used to calculate the total price for Hostaway channels (direct reservations, Booking Engine, and WordPress plugin) and Vrbo. They are also used in financial reporting to calculate tax amounts for external channels
• For Airbnb and Expedia, taxes have to be managed in the channel directly

Booking.com Specific Taxes

Hostaway's Booking.com specific taxes are pushed to Booking.com on the first listing export.

After that, any tax changes must be made directly on Booking.com.

You can map Booking.com taxes to Hostaway taxes by following the next steps:

1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > Financial Reporting > Settings
2. Click on the Taxes tab > On the right-hand side click on Taxes Mapping
3. Select Booking.com > Select the specific taxes to map
4. Apply
   
   
   

Remember that changing the tax mapping information in Hostaway will not change the tax configuration in Booking.com.

Please ensure that you have correctly configured the taxes in Booking.com according to the category you need so that you can map this information with the Hostaway taxes.

For financial reporting calculations that include Booking.com reservations, the Hostaway software will use the following taxes:

• Property rent tax %
• Fixed tax per reservation
• Fixed guest tax per-person, per-night
• Fixed nightly tax

Taxes and fields

In this article, you will find all tax standard fields explained.