To use MyLodgeTax, you sign up through Avalara and pay a one-time setup fee of $299 per property plus $27 per month per property, then report your gross rental revenue by each period’s deadline while Avalara registers your property, calculates the tax, files the return, and remits payment to every applicable authority.1Avalara Knowledge Center. MyLodgeTax Fees Your recurring job is short: report accurate revenue on time. Everything downstream of that is handled for you.
Signing Up and Registering Your Property
Sign up on the MyLodgeTax site and pay the $299 setup fee for each property you want covered. That fee configures your account for automated filing, determines the lodging tax rate for the property’s address, and applies for the tax accounts and licenses you need to rent the property legally. If you already hold current licenses, send them to Avalara and they’ll use those instead of applying for new ones.2Avalara. MyLodgeTax Sign Up
The setup fee does not include the application or license fees the jurisdictions themselves charge. Those are passed through separately and depend on where the property sits. If you operate six or more properties, you’ll need to contact Avalara for commercial pricing.1Avalara Knowledge Center. MyLodgeTax Fees
During setup you provide the full street address of the rental, business contact information, and a bank account for ACH debits. Each property gets its own tax profile. Three rentals in three counties means three profiles, three registrations, and three filing tracks running in parallel.
Reporting Revenue Each Period
Once you’re set up, the rhythm is the same every period. Your filing frequency, monthly, quarterly, or annual, is set by your jurisdiction, and MyLodgeTax assigns the schedule that matches.
At the start of each reporting period, the system emails you daily from the 1st through the 10th to prompt you to report revenue. The reminders stop once you report. You have until the 10th of your reporting month to enter revenue for the prior period. If your tax return itself is due by the 10th, report by the 5th so Avalara has time to file.3Avalara Knowledge Center. I Just Signed Up for a MyLodgeTax Subscription – What Happens Next
The number you enter is your gross rental income for the period, including mandatory fees. MyLodgeTax applies the correct rate and calculates the tax. You don’t look up rates or do the math.
Zero Periods
A return has to be filed every period, even one where you had no bookings.3Avalara Knowledge Center. I Just Signed Up for a MyLodgeTax Subscription – What Happens Next If you don’t report by the 10th, Avalara files a $0 return on your behalf so you don’t take a failure-to-file penalty. Useful protection, but limited: it saves you only from failing to file. If you actually had revenue and didn’t report it, the tax will still catch up with you, along with late-payment consequences.
What Counts as Reportable Revenue
This is the judgment MyLodgeTax cannot make for you. The service applies the right rate to the number you enter, but you decide what the number is.
In most jurisdictions, any mandatory charge a guest must pay to use the rental is part of the taxable rental amount. That includes cleaning fees, pet fees, and extra-person fees, whether you list them separately or fold them into the nightly rate. Refundable deposits generally aren’t taxable unless you keep them. Truly optional add-ons the guest chooses independently, like laundry or arranged dry cleaning, usually aren’t subject to lodging tax. The test is whether the charge is required to occupy the property or genuinely optional. Local rules vary, and the rate determination MyLodgeTax runs for your address accounts for those variations.
Exemptions
The near-universal exemption is the long-term stay. Guests who occupy the property for 30 or more consecutive days are generally treated as residents and exempt from lodging tax. How you apply the exemption differs by jurisdiction. Some require the guest to notify you in writing at the start of the stay that they intend to remain 30 days or more. Others let the exemption trigger automatically after the 30th day, with a refund path for tax collected on earlier nights.
Federal government employees traveling on official business are typically exempt from state and local lodging taxes when they present valid government identification. Exemptions for state employees, nonprofits, and foreign diplomats vary significantly. Whenever a guest claims an exemption, take a copy of the certificate or ID at check-in and file it. Without documentation, an auditor will disallow the exemption and you’ll owe the tax.
Revenue Already Taxed by a Booking Platform
If Airbnb, Vrbo, or another platform already collected and remitted lodging tax on a booking under a marketplace facilitator law, don’t report that revenue through MyLodgeTax or you’ll effectively pay the tax twice. Platform coverage is uneven. A platform might collect your state tax but not your county tax, or handle both in one state and neither in the next. Check what each platform collected before you report. MyLodgeTax is built to work alongside these collections rather than duplicate them.4Avalara. Lodging Tax – Vacation Rental Taxes Filing – Avalara MyLodgeTax
How Payment Moves
When you report revenue, you simultaneously authorize Avalara to debit your linked bank account for the tax due and any applicable fees. The withdrawal hits within three to five banking days.3Avalara Knowledge Center. I Just Signed Up for a MyLodgeTax Subscription – What Happens Next Keep the account funded around that window. A failed debit stacks costs fast: an insufficient-funds fee from your bank and, if the payment misses the tax authority’s deadline, a late-payment penalty from the jurisdiction.
Avalara remits to each applicable authority on your behalf. No separate checks to the state, county, and city. That consolidation is the core of what you’re paying for.
Fixing a Mistake After You Report
If you catch a wrong revenue figure before the reporting period closes on the 10th, email MyLodgeTax support with the correct number of nights rented, the accurate rental revenue, and whether that figure includes tax.5Avalara Knowledge Center. How Can I Fix a Mistake in My Revenue Report After the Reporting Period
After the 10th, the return is already filed. You then have two options. Request a formal amended return, which carries an additional fee. Or roll the missed revenue into your next period’s report. The amended return is cleaner, especially when the discrepancy is meaningful, because rolling corrections forward can muddle your records if you’re later audited.5Avalara Knowledge Center. How Can I Fix a Mistake in My Revenue Report After the Reporting Period
What You Still Have to Do Yourself
MyLodgeTax handles filing mechanics. It doesn’t create the underlying records that back up what you reported. Keep booking logs with dates, guest names, and amounts charged. Keep bank statements showing deposits that reconcile to your reported revenue. Keep every exemption certificate a guest hands you. Keep the electronic filing confirmations MyLodgeTax provides after each return.
For federal purposes, the IRS generally expects you to keep records supporting income or deductions for at least three years from when you filed the return, or two years from when you paid the tax, whichever is later.6Internal Revenue Service. How Long Should I Keep Records State and local lodging tax retention rules usually land in the three-to-four-year range. Four years is a safe default. If an auditor asks for an exemption certificate and you can’t produce it, the exemption is disallowed and you owe the tax plus interest.7Internal Revenue Service. Recordkeeping
Reporting accurate revenue on time, keeping the documents that prove it, and watching what your booking platforms already collected: those three habits are what actually keep you compliant. MyLodgeTax does the rest.