Introducing Tax Automation and Tax Intelligence in the United States

Legal Environments

Lodging taxes change often, and with state, county, and city taxes applying at the same time, keeping them up to date takes time. Tax Automation and Tax Intelligence, part of the Mews Compliance Suite, handle this for you. Tax Automation sets up and maintains your lodging taxes. Tax Intelligence shows you what you collect. This article applies to properties in the United States only.

 

In this article, you can learn about:

 

Benefits

  • Accurate, up-to-date tax rates: rates are kept current automatically, with no manual checks.
  • End-to-end automation: your lodging tax configuration is generated from your property's location and details.
  • Clear visibility: see what you collect and what is exempt in one report, which you can export every month.
  • Less admin for your finance team: spend less time on tax operations and more time knowing everything is in order.

You can watch short overviews in the videos Configure Tax Automation and Tax Intelligence dashboard and report.

Setting up Tax Automation

Tax Automation generates the right lodging tax configuration for your property based on its location and characteristics.

  1. In Mews Operations, go to the main menu > Settings > Property > Finance > Tax Configuration.
  2. Open the Tax automation tab.
  3. Enter a name for your tax configuration.
  4. Check your address. If your address is already in Mews, it is filled in automatically. If not, enter it manually.
  5. Enter your latitude and longitude. These are required so that Mews can locate your property precisely. In the United States, this matters because properties in the same ZIP code can fall under different city or county taxes.
  6. Add your property details. Start with the star rating and any category, such as Superior or Luxury. In the United States, some lodging taxes also depend on other property details, so complete all of them.
  7. Click Set up automation.

Mews works with a specialist tax data provider to find the lodging taxes that apply to your property. This can take a few hours. While it is in progress, the status shows Pending, and you can see which tax package is being generated for your property.

Once your configuration is active, whenever a tax authority publishes a change, your rates are updated automatically, so your property always applies the latest rules without you doing anything.

Using Tax Intelligence

Tax Intelligence is a report that gives you a clear view of the lodging taxes and fees you collect and report.

Note:

  • The report only includes stays where all bills are closed. Each stay is counted in the month of the reservation's check-out.
  • Only Admins and users whose role has the Access sensitive reports permission can see Tax Intelligence.
  1. In Mews Operations, go to the main menu > Finance > Tax Intelligence.
  2. Check your property details at the top of the report: property name, municipality, and license number.
  3. Filter the data by week, month, quarter, or a custom period.
  4. Export the report as PDF or Excel.

The report has three tabs:

Dashboard: a summary of the key figures.

  • Person nights, taxable person nights, and exempt person nights.
  • A tax breakdown showing how much lodging tax you collected in the period for each tax rate. For example, state, county, and city.
  • A trend chart of lodging tax collected month by month.

Monthly report: all tax-related figures, in three sections.

  • Summary: accommodation tax and city tax collected.
  • Occupancy: room nights, person nights, arrivals, and exempt person nights.
  • Revenue: total accommodation revenue excluding tax, adjustments, taxable accommodation revenue, and exempt accommodation revenue.

Exemption log: everything related to city tax exemptions, such as long-stay exemptions.

  • The number of exempt stays, exempt guests, and exempt person nights.
  • A table grouped by exemption reason, with the number of guests and person nights for each.
  • A detailed list of each exemption, showing the guest, check-in and check-out dates, and the reason.

Disabling Tax Automation

You can disable Tax Automation at any time. Disabling it does not stop your Compliance Suite subscription, and the other integrations in your Compliance Suite stay unchanged.

  • Your configuration is deleted. Your lodging tax rates are no longer updated automatically, so you need to check and update them yourself in Mews Operations under the main menu > Settings > Property > Finance > Tax configuration. Tax Intelligence stays available in Finance as long as the Compliance Suite is active.
  • To enable it again, open the same Tax automation tab and set it up again as you did the first time.

To stop paying, delete the Compliance Suite from the Marketplace. To learn how the Compliance Suite works and what to check before you make a change, see Managing the Mews Compliance Suite.

Pricing

Tax Automation and Tax Intelligence are part of the Mews Compliance Suite, available for USD 30 per property per month. One subscription gives you both features.

 

You can now keep your state, county, and city lodging taxes current without manual checks and report what you collect from one exportable report.

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