{"slug": "show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers", "title": "Show HN: TaxLens – free lodging-tax API for hotels, OTAs, and property managers", "summary": "TaxLens, a free lodging-tax API for hotels, OTAs, and property managers, launched on Hacker News. The API resolves jurisdiction, stacks tax layers, and provides deterministic breakdowns, booking evidence, invoices, and liability reporting. It aims to reduce compliance risk and manual work across the lodging industry.", "body_md": "### Calculate\n\nResolve the jurisdiction, stack every applicable tax layer, and return a deterministic breakdown before checkout.\n\nCalculate, persist booking evidence, issue invoices, report liabilities, and monitor regulatory change across every lodging-tax workflow.\n\nTaxLens is not just a calculation endpoint. It carries the same tax decision from quote to booking evidence, invoice issuance, liability reporting, and regulatory monitoring.\n\nResolve the jurisdiction, stack every applicable tax layer, and return a deterministic breakdown before checkout.\n\nStore the confirmed booking, idempotency key, buyer context, and immutable tax snapshot for downstream finance work.\n\nProject the booking into commercial invoices, self-billing flows, credit notes, and UBL/XML-ready documents.\n\nPull period liability reports from issued invoice snapshots so tax teams can remit by jurisdiction and category.\n\nAI monitoring detects source changes, while human review approves updates with authority names and legal references.\n\nThe same platform supports different buyers because lodging tax risk appears in different parts of the operating model.\n\nBooking.com, Airbnb-style platforms, bedbanks, and merchant-of-record flows.\n\nRoute marketplace facilitator, merchant-of-record, commission VAT, and self-billing scenarios without separate tax logic per channel.\n\nReduce launch friction when adding new jurisdictions or supplier models.\n\nmerchant-of-record and channel context travel with each calculation.\n\nMulti-property brands and regional hotel operators.\n\nGive front-desk and finance teams one source of truth for quotes, invoices, credit notes, and monthly liability reporting.\n\nCut manual spreadsheet review before close and reduce under/over-collection risk.\n\nbooking snapshots keep historical invoices stable after rule changes.\n\nProperty managers, channel managers, and PMS platforms with many units.\n\nMap every unit once, inherit property tax drivers, and calculate stay tax consistently across direct, OTA, and owner channels.\n\nShip compliant tax workflows without building local rules into the PMS.\n\nproperty defaults fill booking inputs without rewriting historical records.\n\nRates are only the visible edge. TaxLens connects address resolution, additive tax logic, booking evidence, fiscal documents, and reporting into one operating layer.\n\nUse a known jurisdiction code or resolve an address into the country, state, city, district, and special-zone path.\n\nCountry, regional, city, and district rates fire independently so remittance lines remain separate and auditable.\n\nConfirmed bookings preserve the exact tax response, property drivers, buyer context, and issuer defaults used at sale time.\n\nIssue commercial invoices, self-billed invoices, and credit notes with legal issuer fields and UBL/XML output.\n\nReport tax liability from issued invoice snapshots, not recalculated bookings, so finance sees stable remittance numbers.\n\nMonitoring agents propose rate changes; reviewers approve drafts with source URLs, authority names, and legal references.\n\nOne request shape handles percentage taxes, flat nightly fees, per-person city taxes, tax-on-tax bases, and property-type rules. Booking APIs preserve the final snapshot for invoices, credit notes, and liability reports.\n\nNY state sales tax, NYC hotel occupancy tax, MCTD, nightly unit fee, and convention fee in one response.\n\n```\ncurl -X POST https://api.taxlens.getdynamiq.ai/v1/tax/calculate \\\n  -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\\n  -H \"X-API-Key: <your-api-key>\" \\\n  -d '{\n  \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n  \"stay_date\": \"2026-06-15\",\n  \"nightly_rate\": 250,\n  \"currency\": \"USD\",\n  \"nights\": 3,\n  \"number_of_guests\": 2,\n  \"property_type\": \"hotel\"\n}'\n{\n  \"jurisdiction\": {\n    \"code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n    \"name\": \"New York City\",\n    \"path\": \"US.NY.NYC\"\n  },\n  \"tax_breakdown\": {\n    \"total_tax\": \"87.37\",\n    \"effective_rate\": \"0.1165\",\n    \"currency\": \"USD\",\n    \"subtotal_excluding_tax\": \"750\",\n    \"subtotal_including_tax\": \"837.37\",\n    \"components\": [\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"vat_standard\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY\",\n        \"rate\": 0.04,\n        \"tax_amount\": \"30.00\"\n      },\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"municipal_pct\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n        \"rate\": 0.00375,\n        \"tax_amount\": \"2.81\"\n      },\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"occ_pct\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n        \"rate\": 0.05875,\n        \"tax_amount\": \"44.06\"\n      },\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"occ_flat_night\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n        \"rate_type\": \"tiered\",\n        \"tax_amount\": \"6.00\"\n      },\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"convention_flat\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US-NY-NYC\",\n        \"rate\": 1.5,\n        \"tax_amount\": \"4.50\"\n      },\n      {\n        \"category_code\": \"vat_standard\",\n        \"jurisdiction_code\": \"US\",\n        \"rate\": 0,\n        \"tax_amount\": \"0.00\"\n      }\n    ]\n  },\n  \"total_with_tax\": \"837.37\",\n  \"collection_info\": {\n    \"who_collects\": \"property\",\n    \"taxable_base\": \"room_rate\"\n  }\n}\n```\n\nTaxLens earns confidence through coverage discipline, auditable source history, immutable fiscal records, and human review. No unapproved customer-logo claims, no hand-wavy proof.\n\nAgents detect potential changes, operators approve drafts, and each active row keeps effective dates, authority names, legal references, and source URLs.\n\nTracked for country-level monitoring and coverage intelligence.\n\nLayered lodging, VAT/GST, tourism, city, and special-zone rates.\n\nAge, stay length, property type, channel, and supplier-side logic.\n\nCountry, state, city, district, and special-zone calculation paths.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers", "canonical_source": "https://taxlens.getdynamiq.ai", "published_at": "2026-06-21 23:46:40+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-21 23:55:45.310332+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["TaxLens", "Booking.com", "Airbnb"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-taxlens-free-lodging-tax-api-for-hotels-otas-and-property-managers.jsonld"}}