What is TaxLens?
TaxLens is a tax engine and e-invoicing system for accommodation. It tells you exactly which taxes apply to a stay — anywhere in the world — and turns each booking into a compliant fiscal invoice.
The problem it solves
Accommodation tax is deceptively hard. A single night in a hotel can carry national VAT, a state or provincial lodging tax, a city occupancy tax, and a per-guest tourist levy — each set by a different authority, each with its own base, rounding, exemptions, and effective dates. Multiply that by every city you operate in and every channel you sell through (direct, OTA, marketplace), and getting the number right by hand stops being realistic.
TaxLens computes that number for you. Give it a location and the details of a stay, and it returns an itemized breakdown of every tax that applies, why it applies, and who is responsible for collecting it. It then takes the same booking and produces a legally structured electronic invoice you can issue and keep as your system of record.
What it does
TaxLens has two tightly connected halves:
- A tax calculation engine. It models the real-world tax stack for accommodation across 230+ countries and 600+ sub-jurisdictions — states, provinces, counties, cities, and special districts — and evaluates the rules (exemptions, caps, reduced rates, reverse charge, and more) that change what a guest actually pays.
- An e-invoicing system of record. It converts a calculated booking into an EN 16931 invoice, validates it for send-readiness, serializes it to UBL 2.1 / PEPPOL BIS 3.0, issues it with a gapless fiscal number, and supports corrections through credit notes.
Around those two halves sit the things that make them usable in production: managed properties with address geocoding, persisted bookings with refunds and adjustments, tax-liability reporting, a team/role model, and a full REST API.
Who it's for
TaxLens is built for anyone who has to get accommodation tax right at scale. The guide calls out three primary audiences throughout:
- Hotels and hotel groups — direct bookings, multiple properties, in-house finance teams that issue invoices.
- Property managers (PMS / short-term rental) — many units across many jurisdictions, often selling across several channels at once.
- OTAs and marketplaces — platforms that may be the merchant of record, charge commission, and need correct tax routing between themselves and the property.
Two ways to use it
Everything in TaxLens is available two ways, and you can mix them freely:
- The dashboard — a no-code web app to calculate tax, manage properties and bookings, issue invoices, and pull reports.
- The API — the same capabilities as a REST API, so your PMS, booking engine, or checkout can calculate tax and issue invoices automatically.
New here? Start with Core concepts to build the mental model, then run your first calculation.