Edinburgh's Visitor Levy, worked out properly.
Visitor Levy App turns your bookings into an accurate Scottish Visitor Levy return — every exemption, night cap and VAT step shown in plain English, ready for the council.
Free for one property, forever. No card needed.
Visitor levy due
£23.33
Guest pays
£588.00
- Accommodation charge only
- £560.00
- Removed VAT to get the net charge
- £466.67
- Length of stay
- 4 nights
- Night cap of 5 applied
- 4 nights
Live calculation — move the sliders. Runs in your browser.
Edinburgh rate
5%
of net accommodation, live from 24 July 2026
Night cap
5 nights
consecutive nights charged per stay
Guest data stored
None
bookings are calculated in your browser
The problem Edinburgh hosts face right now
Manual maths
Working out 5% on every booking by hand — across dozens of stays during Fringe? That's hours of spreadsheet work, and VAT sequencing or the night cap is easy to get wrong even when you're careful.
No audit trail
The council can ask to see your working. Without a proper record of how each booking's levy was calculated, proving your figures later is a genuine headache.
Getting the number wrong
A small mistake on the VAT order, the night cap, or an exempt booking adds up fast across a full quarter — and it's your name on the return.
Visitor Levy App calculates each booking properly, flags what looks wrong, and prepares a return you can file. You review it and submit it to the council yourself — we never file or pay on your behalf.
Built for how you let
Airbnb & short-let hosts
You already juggle a short-term let licence, platform payouts and self-assessment. The visitor levy …
Read moreHotels & guesthouses
Room rates that include breakfast, VAT-registered pricing and a PMS export that wasn't designed for …
Read moreHostels
High volume, low nightly rates and bed-by-bed occupancy. A percentage levy on hundreds of small book…
Read moreLetting agents
You manage properties for owners who remain legally liable. You need per-client figures, per-client …
Read moreAugust in Edinburgh
Fringe pricing means Fringe-sized levy amounts
August rates are often three to five times your usual nightly price — so the 5% levy on those bookings is three to five times larger too. Our guide works through an example and what to check on surge-month stays.
Four steps to a filed Edinburgh Visitor Levy return
You don't need to understand the legislation. You need to get the number right — and be able to show your working if anyone asks.
Add your property
Tell us the council area and whether you're VAT registered. We load that council's rate, caps and start date for you.
Property name
Council area
Property type
VAT registered
Bring in your bookings
Upload a spreadsheet from Airbnb, Booking.com or your PMS — or type stays in one by one. We map the columns for you.
Parsed in your browser — nothing uploaded.
See every calculation
Each booking shows its full working: what's excluded, night caps, exemptions and VAT, in the correct legal order.
Accommodation charge only
£980.00£980.00 of accommodation, including standard costs that come with every stay — cleaning between visitors, utilities, WiFi, basic amenities and welcome refreshments. £60.00 of extras (meals, parking, laundry, entertainment, transport and optional add-ons) is excluded by rule.
Removed VAT to get the net charge
£816.67Your figure includes VAT at 20%. The levy is calculated on the charge before VAT, so £980.00 ÷ 1.20 = £816.67.
Length of stay
7 nights2026-08-03 to 2026-08-10 is 7 nights at £116.67 net per night.
Night cap of 5 applied
5 nightsCity of Edinburgh charges the levy on a maximum of 5 consecutive nights, so only the first 5 of the 7 eligible nights are chargeable.
Accommodation charge for chargeable nights
£583.33Only 5 of 7 nights in this period are chargeable, so the levy is calculated on £116.67 × 5 = £583.33 of the £816.67 charge for this period.
Levy calculated (before VAT)
£29.175% × £583.33 of chargeable accommodation (£116.67 per night × 5 chargeable nights) = £29.17.
VAT applied last
£169.17VAT at 20% is charged on accommodation plus levy (£816.67 + £29.17) = £169.17. VAT is never calculated before the levy.
Total charged to the guest
£1015.01£816.67 accommodation + £29.17 levy + £169.17 VAT = £1015.01, plus £60.00 of extras.
File with confidence
Download a council-ready return as PDF, CSV or Excel, then lock the quarter for your own audit record.
Q3 2026 return
FiledA few more details worth knowing about
Beyond the working you've just seen, these are the parts an audit looks at. There's a full walkthrough in the Edinburgh levy explainer.
- Works with all major booking platforms and manual entry
- Bookings made before the scheme start date treated as exempt
- Rate outliers, duplicates and transition-straddling stays flagged before you file
- Filed quarters locked as your own reference record
Your guests' data never reaches us
You've seen that booking files stay in your browser. What happens to the little we do keep matters too: only the quarter totals you confirm reach your account, hosted in the EU, encrypted in transit and locked to you by row-level access control in the database.
How that works- No guest names or stay details stored server-side
- No special-category data collected, ever
- Account data hosted in the EU, encrypted in transit
- Row-level access control enforced in the database
Simple pricing
Single property
Free
One free unit per account — whichever property, room or bed you added first. Full calculations and exports, forever.
Start freeSee full pricing detailsYour own properties
From £5/mo
£6 per property, £5 above ten. Quarterly and annual discounts.
For properties you own or operate yourself.
Get startedSee full pricing detailsAgent
From £29/mo
£4 per unit under management, with per-client grouping and export.
For managing properties on behalf of other owners.
Get startedSee full pricing detailsHotels, B&Bs, and hostels are priced per room or bed — see full pricing for exact rates.
Visitor Levy App helps you calculate, check and record your visitor levy. It does not file on your behalf. The property owner or operator remains legally responsible for the accuracy of the figures and for submitting the return on time. Always check the figures against your own records before you file.
Get your next return right
One free unit per account, forever — whichever property, room or bed you added first. Add your bookings, check the working, and download a council-ready return.