How does the tourist tax work in Vezpa?

A tax is a RULE — minimum age, maximum age, maximum nights, fixed or percentage — and the amount is a property of the DAY, written in the grid. Each room is linked to one tax only, and Vezpa works out the figure per guest and per night.

How do I set up the tourist tax?

From the «Rates» bar, entry «Tourist Tax Management». In the menu at the top right: «Tax Management» to create the tax with «Min Age», «Max Age» and «Maximum Nights», «Assign Rooms» to link it to the rooms. The amounts are then written in the grid of days.

Is the tax calculated automatically for every booking?

Yes, and it is worked out again at every booking event: guests registered, a guest added or removed, a change of dates or of room. Changing the amounts in the grid does NOT update bookings already registered: those keep the tax they had.

Tourist Tax Guide

Create the taxes, write the amounts day by day, assign the rooms and read the monthly report

Where it is set up and who can touch it Creating a tax The amounts live in the grid Assigning the rooms Who does not pay, and for how many nights What does not recalculate on its own View and density Report Printing the report If something does not add up

Where it is set up and who can touch itYou come in from Rates, and everything starts in a menu

The tourist tax opens from the «Rates» bar, entry «Tourist Tax Management». What opens is the grid of days, and from there on everything goes through the three-dot menu at the top right.

Menu entry	What it is for
«Tax Management»	Creates, edits and deletes the taxes, and opens the two property settings
«Assign Rooms»	Decides which tax applies to which room
«Monthly view» / «Free view»	One month at a time, or continuous scrolling
«Today», «Go to date», «Refresh»	Move or reload the grid

The entry exists only where the tax does. «Tourist Tax Management» appears in Rates only for the countries where Vezpa handles the tourist tax: elsewhere it is not hidden, it is not there.

Opening is not writing. Rates are visible to the «Manager», the «Assistant» and the «Revenue Manager», so all three get this far; but creating a tax, changing an amount or assigning a room is allowed to the «Manager» and the «Assistant». For the Revenue Manager the server refuses the save.

Creating a taxFour fields and a switch — the amount is not here

In «Tax Management» the «New Tax» button opens a short form. If you have no tax yet, in its place you find «Create First Tax»: it does the same thing.

Field	What it decides
«Tax Name»	Whatever you call it. Eight characters at most: it is a label, not a description
«Min Age»	From what age the tax is paid. Below that number the guest is exempt. There is also «No minimum limit»
«Max Age»	Up to what age the tax is paid. Above that number the guest is exempt. There is also «No maximum limit»
«Maximum Nights»	How many nights at most are paid in one stay. The field itself suggests that «366 = whole year», that is, no practical cap

The form has no amount field, and that is not an oversight. The tax is a rule; the figure belongs to the day, and is written in the grid (see The amounts live in the grid). That is why the same tax can cost less in winter without having to create a second one.

Fixed or percentage

The «Percentage-based tax (%)» switch decides how the number written in the grid is read. Off, the switch's own subtitle states that the calendar amount is a fixed value per person per night; on, that the same number is a percentage of the room price.

Turning it on brings up a second switch, «Per person», which changes the result substantially:

on: «The percentage is calculated for each paying guest»;
off: «The percentage is calculated once on the room price».

The two property settings

At the foot of «Tax Management», under the heading «Property Settings», there are two switches that apply to every percentage tax together:

Switch	What it changes
«Include meals in the base»	Applies the percentage to the price with board, not to the room alone
«Base net of VAT»	Strips VAT out of the price before applying the percentage

On a fixed tax these two switches have no effect: there is no price to work a percentage on. They stay visible anyway, because they belong to the property and not to a single tax.

The amounts live in the gridOne row per tax, one column per day

The grid is the heart of the page: each cell is the amount that tax has on that day. It is changed in two ways, and the sheet that opens is the same one.

A single day: tap the cell.
A period: select the range on the grid, or open the sheet and use «Change Dates». There is also «Whole year», which widens the selection in one tap.
The sheet holds one field for every configured tax: you can change just one and leave the others empty, or update them all at once.
Under «Apply to» there are the seven days of the week. Unticking some makes the change skip those days inside the range: that is how you give the weekend a different amount.

A field left empty zeroes nothing: that tax stays as it was. To bring it to zero you write 0.

Where the currency has no cents, the amount is a whole number. In yen, Icelandic króna and Hungarian forint the field only accepts whole numbers: the keyboard shows no decimal separator and a value such as 1.50 is refused, with the reason. This is not an app restriction: in those currencies cents do not exist, and a tax written with decimals would be rounded when charged anyway — you would be shown one number and pay another. Where cents do exist, the euro included, 2.50 is written as always. A percentage is a different case: 12.50% is written with decimals in any currency, because a rate is not an amount.

The grid only covers the days the property calendar already knows. A day outside that range is not created by the change: it is simply skipped, and the sheet tells you how many days it changed.

Assigning the roomsOne tax per room, and the mistake you pay for at month end

From the menu, «Assign Rooms» opens the «Assign Taxes» screen: one card per room, and on each a «Select tax» menu. The link is made from the room, not from the tax: you no longer tick rooms in a list.

Every room can have one tax only, or «None». Until you choose, the card says «Not assigned»; once chosen, the card says which tax it is assigned to.

This is the most expensive mistake on this page. A room left on «None» produces zero tax on all its bookings, and in the monthly report it does not even show a zero row: it disappears. You notice in front of the return, when the nights are already gone.

In a hotel or a B&B the report row depends on the FIRST room of the property. If that one has no active tax, the whole property vanishes from the report even when the other rooms are assigned. In holiday homes it is different: there each unit has its own row and disappears on its own.

If every room pays the same, one tax is enough: create it and assign it to all of them. More taxes are needed when the by-law makes a distinction — by property type, by category, or by municipality.

A tax assigned to some rooms cannot be deleted: the app says so and asks you to remove the links first. That is a protection, not a limit to work around.

Who does not pay, and for how many nightsThree automatic rules, plus one by hand

Exemptions are not declared one by one: they come out of the tax fields and of the guest's own data.

Rule	How it really works
«Min Age»	Anyone younger than that number does not pay that night
«Max Age»	Anyone older than that number does not pay that night
«Maximum Nights»	Beyond that many taxed nights, the rest are free
Exemption by hand	Flagged on the guest's record, and it covers their whole stay

Age is worked out night by night, not once on arrival. Someone whose birthday falls during the stay starts paying from the birthday itself: the nights before stay exempt, the ones after do not. In the report the same guest therefore appears both among the minors and among the taxable ones, and that is correct.

If the date of birth is missing but a declared age is there, that one applies, the same for every night. If neither is there, no age threshold can fire and the guest pays.

The night cap is only consumed by nights that cost something. A night with a zero amount — a day you never filled in on the grid, say — does not burn the cap. That is deliberate: otherwise the guest would pay fewer nights than the ones you declare to the municipality.

Who is exempt, from what age and for how many nights is decided by your municipality's by-law, not by Vezpa: here you write the numbers that by-law imposes. Vezpa applies exactly those.

Work trips and exempt guests. Guests travelling for work pay the tax like everyone else, even when a company pays the bill: the booking's “Business” chip is only a label and does not touch the tax. If the local rules exempt a category of guests (for example in Czechia seasonal workers are exempt, business trips are not), mark the guest as exempt on their card with “Tax exempt”: it applies to their whole stay and they appear among the exempt in the reports. Keep the documents that justify the exemption, for example the seasonal work contract or a statement from the guest. In the countries whose law or system asks for the reason (Czechia, Hungary, Slovenia), with the switch on the «Exemption reason» menu also appears, with that country's official reasons and codes: the reason is printed in the guest register.

What does not recalculate on its ownWhat the report shows, and when a booking realigns

When you change an amount in the grid, that number counts for the maths done afterwards. A booking already registered keeps the tax it was given: it does not update by itself. The same goes for the tax rules — minimum and maximum age, maximum nights, fixed amount or percentage — and for a unit moved onto a different tax.

A booking's tax is worked out again when something happens to that booking: a guest added or removed, a change of dates, a change of room, the guest registration.

The report shows the tax frozen on the booking, that is the one charged to the guest. A booking takes that frozen tax at the first of the events listed above: from then on report and bill say the same number, even if you later change the grid, the tax rules or the unit it is linked to. A booking to which nothing of the kind has ever happened does not have it yet: for that one the report rebuilds the amount by reading today's grid, and after a backdated change the two numbers can diverge with nothing to warn you.

If the two numbers diverge, do not reopen the booking to «fix» it. The only thing that realigns it is precisely an event on that booking, and such an event redoes the tax at today's amounts and rules: it would change the money owed on a stay already sold, possibly already paid. The figure to pay over for that booking stays the one you charged it, and you read it on the booking itself. The rule is that a booking stays consistent with the moment it was created: that is why a backdated correction on a period already sold is best avoided.

The other way round there is no problem at all: future bookings have no tax worked out yet, and will take the new amounts and rules when they are created.

View and densityOrientation and how many rows or columns to show, the same preference as the calendar

This grid too can be laid out horizontally or vertically. The entry is called «View and density» and sits in the three-dot menu at the top right; the same choice is in Configuration, and the housekeeper and the observer find it in their own account menu. It is a single preference: it applies to the Calendar, to Rates and to the Tourist Tax, no need to choose it three times.

Below the orientation you decide how many rows or columns to show at most, not how wide they are: the size of each is the consequence of that number. With the days vertical the entry is «Columns in view», with the days horizontal «Rows in view». If the taxes (or the rooms) are fewer than the chosen number you see them all; «Automatic» picks a comfortable width in vertical and keeps the comfortable row height in horizontal. The values are 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36 and 40, plus «Automatic», the default mode. Above about 24 the rows (or columns) get thin and something gives way. On this grid the detail row under the tax name gives way, the one with the ages and the maximum days; the tax name never gives way, because the detail is a refinement and the name is the tax. The amount never gives up the digits its currency has: unlike the Calendar and the Rates, here they always stay, at any density — two decimals in euros, and 2.50 does not become 3; none in yen, a currency without cents — it is money owed to an authority, and rounding it would change what is due. The day header shrinks too: the day of the week drops to a single letter, and only at the last step does the row with the month disappear.

The choice stays on the device you are using: the one you make on your phone does not follow you to your laptop. For the details, see the View and density of the grid section of the Calendar guide.

ReportMonthly report for the return to the municipality

The report section generates a complete monthly report of the tourist tax collected, ready for the periodic return to be submitted to the municipality. Select the month you want in order to view all the aggregated data.

Data	Description
Total tax to pay	Amount due for the month, worked out with the same rules used to charge the tax on the bookings.
Guests	Guests registered in the month. Anyone appearing in more than one room of the same booking is counted once.
Taxable	Guests whose tax came out above zero, with the nights actually taxed (net of the band's maximum nights).
Minors	Guests below the band's minimum age, with the nights on which they were.
Over max age	Guests above the band's maximum age, with the nights on which they were.
Exempted	Guests flagged as exempt on their record, with their nights.
Detail by property	One row per property; if you manage apartments, one row per unit.

Using the report

The report leaves the app as a PDF: the printer icon at the top right produces it, and from there you send it to the printer or share it (see Printing the report). The document carries the month's total and one row per property, with a balancing row at the foot.

The report says how much is due, not how much you have already collected: what the guest has paid is on the individual booking, as the outstanding tax. The categories also overlap: a guest who reaches the minimum age during the stay appears both among the minors, for the nights before the birthday, and among the taxable ones, for those after.

A unit not linked to an active tax does not appear at all in the report: it does not produce a zero row, it disappears. It does stay, though, if the tax was already charged to a booking that month: that amount keeps appearing even if the tax is later switched off or reassigned. And until the registration of a room's lead guest has been saved, that stay does not enter the counts.

Remember to check the payment deadlines set by your municipality. Some require monthly returns, others quarterly or annual ones.

Printing the report

In «Report», the printer icon at the top right produces a PDF with the month's total and one row per property. From there choose «Print» to send it to the printer, or «Share PDF» to save or send it. The icon only appears in months with at least one stay.

If something does not add upThe symptoms, and the real cause of each

I cannot find the entry in Rates. The tourist tax exists only in the countries where Vezpa handles it: if the property is elsewhere, the entry is not there.
I save and it does not save. If your role is «Revenue Manager» you can open the page but not write to it: ask a «Manager» or an «Assistant».
A room is missing from the report. It has no tax assigned, or the tax is off, and it collected nothing that month. A unit that did collect a tax that month stays in the report even if the tax was later switched off or reassigned.
The report says zero even though there are guests. A stay only enters the counts once the registration of that room's lead guest has been saved.
I corrected a past amount and the bookings did not change. That is the expected behaviour: see What does not recalculate on its own.
The report does not match what I collected. They are not meant to match: the report states what is due. What was collected is on the individual booking, as the outstanding tax.
I cannot delete a tax. It is still assigned to one or more rooms: the app says how many. Remove the links and try again.
I cannot find the printer icon in the report. It only appears in months with at least one stay: on an empty month the document would be the header alone.