Length of stay tax

A lodging tax whose rate depends on how many nights a guest stays, rather than being a flat amount or a flat percentage.

Two shapes are common. In the first, the rate changes after a threshold: a city charges a fixed amount per night for the first week and a lower one after that. In the second, the whole stay is taxed at one rate determined by its total length, which is how many jurisdictions exempt long stays altogether by treating them as residential rather than touristic.

The difference matters when a booking is extended. Under the first shape, the extra nights simply get taxed at the later rate. Under the second, extending a stay can change the rate on nights you have already charged for, which means issuing a correction for tax already posted. PMSes that support this will post an offsetting transaction automatically.

Which shape applies is set by local law, not by your software, and the system cannot tell you if you have configured the wrong one.