Most hosts assume adding 15.5% to their nightly rate covers the new platform fee. It doesn’t. You need to bake your fixed costs in to survive. Use our free calculator to find your exact break-even price; and see if this sudden spike in artificial gross revenue will accidentally trigger local VAT/GST tax thresholds.
Because the platform deducts its fee from the final total, a linear 15.5% addition leaves you operating at a loss. To completely offset the fee, your effective markup must be exactly 18.34%. But this creates a dangerous secondary problem: Phantom Revenue.
🇬🇧 The £90k UK VAT Cliff:
Inflating your gross accelerates your trajectory to mandatory 20% VAT registration.
🇳🇿 The $60k NZ GST Threshold:
Breaching this limit strips your 8.5% flat-rate credit and drags your physical asset into the GST net.
🇦🇺 The $75k AU Threshold & Victoria Levy:
Inflated gross triggers the commercial residential threshold and compounds the 7.5% state levy.
🇺🇸 The 1099-K Reversion:
Spiking gross revenue above $20,000 triggers automatic IRS audits and artificially inflates local TOT (Transient Occupancy Taxes).
You cannot allow an OTA to dictate your gross revenue narrative. The survival strategy is simple: bake your cleaning costs into a lower OTA base rate, and migrate all secondary revenue to KoruStay’s autonomous Digital Guest Service Manager.
🤑 Strip the Fees:
Remove cleaning, pet, and extra guest fees from the OTA. Keep the advertised price as low as mathematically possible.
🧑💼Deploy the Service Manager:
KoruStay engages the guest autonomously via SMS/Email leading up to their stay, acting as a digital concierge.
📈 Capture Direct Revenue: Guests purchase late check-outs, pet fees, and mid-stay cleans directly from their phones. You bypass the 15.5% tax entirely.
KoruStay offers enterprise-grade commerce infrastructure tailored to your accounting workflows.
KoruStay Managed Upsells (Full-Service)
Ideal for operators wanting zero administrative overhead.
One of the lowest rates globally starting at 1.5% (max 4.5%)
Pro plans are 1.5% others 4.5%
0% Commerce Engine (Self-Managed)
Ideal for sophisticated operators and Property Manager Companies.
Connect your own Stripe merchant account in seconds. Keep 100% of your upsell revenue. Pay only standard Stripe processing fees. Cleanly decouple funds for perfect tax threshold management.
Stop paying commission on your own physical cleaning fees. Protect your business logic, avoid the tax trap, and decouple your revenue.