Frequently asked questions

Straight answers on the Visitor Levy itself, what this product does and doesn't do, and how your data is handled.

What is the Scottish Visitor Levy?

The Visitor Levy is a percentage charge that Scottish local authorities can apply to overnight accommodation, under the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024. Each council sets its own rate, effective date and rules within that framework — so far, Edinburgh is the only council with a confirmed, live scheme (5%, effective from 24 July 2026, with the first 5 nights of a stay chargeable).

It is charged on the accommodation portion of a booking, before VAT, under every scheme currently confirmed. Platform fees and genuinely optional guest services are excluded — a cleaning fee depends on how it's classified: a mandatory changeover charge that's really part of the cost of the stay is included in the levy base, a genuinely optional one is excluded, and one with no known classification is excluded and flagged for review rather than guessed. See how a calculation works for the detail.

Who does the levy apply to?

Any accommodation provider taking overnight stays in a local authority area with a live scheme: short-term let hosts (including Airbnb and Booking.com listings), hotels, B&Bs, guesthouses, hostels, and letting agents managing properties on behalf of others. The specific fields that matter — room/unit counts, bundled breakfast, VAT treatment — vary by accommodation type, which is why this product asks for different details depending on how you register a property.

How does the free calculator work?

Enter a council, the stay's check-in and check-out dates, and the accommodation amount charged. The calculator runs that single booking through the same calculation engine used for full quarterly returns, and shows the chargeable nights, any pro-rating, the rate applied, and the resulting levy — with a plain-English, step-by-step explanation of how each figure was reached. No account or card details are needed to use it.

Is my guest data ever sent anywhere?

No. There is no guest name, email, phone number, or address field anywhere in this product's data model — not in the free calculator, not in manual entry, and not in spreadsheet imports, where only the columns you explicitly map to a fixed set of levy-relevant fields (dates, accommodation amount, and similar) are ever read. Full detail on exactly how this works is on the Security & Privacy page.

What does "Return Readiness" mean?

Return Readiness is a pre-flight check run against a whole reporting period (typically a quarter) before you file. It surfaces exactly what's outstanding — bookings flagged for review, an unconfirmed VAT setting, a missing availability declaration, or scheme data that hasn't been re-verified since it changed — with each issue linking straight to where it's fixed, instead of leaving you to discover problems after you've already filed.

Does this product file my Visitor Levy return for me?

No. There is no integration with any council's filing system, and there never will be one on this product's current architecture. What it does is prepare accurate figures and a clean audit trail for your quarter — you (or your accountant) still submit the actual return to your local authority and make payment yourselves. "Filed" and "payment recorded" in this product are record-keeping fields you set after doing so elsewhere, not confirmation that anything was transmitted to a council on your behalf.

How does pricing work?

Pricing is usage-based, billed per property, room, bed or managed unit depending on your accommodation type, with a free entitlement covering your first unit on most plans (letting agents currently start billing from unit one, given the different scale of that use case). See the full breakdown, including a live calculator for your own numbers, on the Pricing page.

Which councils are supported?

We only mark a council's scheme "live" once it has been independently verified against official council guidance — we never guess a rate, cap or start date. Edinburgh is currently the only council with a confirmed live scheme; the full, current list is always on the Councils page, which reflects live data rather than a hardcoded list.

How is my data kept private overall?

HTTPS throughout, spreadsheet parsing that happens in your browser rather than on our servers, strict tenant isolation between organisations, and Stripe handling all payment details directly — card numbers never reach this application. The full architecture, including what we deliberately don't claim, is on the Security & Privacy page.