About Levy Desk
We built Levy Desk because holiday let hosts in Scotland and Wales were being left to figure out complex new levy rules on their own — often getting them wrong.
The problem we solve
Edinburgh introduced the UK's first visitor levy in July 2026. Glasgow, Aberdeen, Stirling, and Cardiff are following. Each council has its own rate, its own night cap rules, its own exemptions, and its own filing deadlines. For a host with properties across multiple councils, keeping track of all of this in a spreadsheet is error-prone and time-consuming.
The consequences of getting it wrong are real. Filing an incorrect return — whether overclaiming exemptions, miscalculating the levy base, or missing a quarterly deadline — can result in penalties from the council and reputational risk for letting agents who manage properties on behalf of clients.
How Levy Desk works
Import your bookings
Upload a CSV or Excel export from Airbnb, Booking.com, or any other platform. Levy Desk maps the columns to the right fields and imports every booking in seconds.
We calculate the levy
Our rules engine applies the correct rate, night cap, exemptions, and VAT rules for each council — automatically. Every calculation stores its full working so you can explain any figure to a council auditor or a client.
You file the return
Levy Desk produces a ready-to-file return pack as a PDF and CSV. You review it, download it, and file it with the council. We never file or pay on your behalf — that stays with you.
Built for accuracy
The levy rules are complex, ambiguous in places, and will change over time. Levy Desk handles this by treating rules as versioned data, not hardcoded logic. When Edinburgh updates its rate or a new council comes online, we add a new rule version with an effective date. Calculations locked in a filed quarter never change.
Where the law is genuinely ambiguous — for example, bookings that straddle a levy start date — we surface the uncertainty as an exception flag rather than silently making an assumption. You decide how to handle it.
Who we are
Levy Desk was founded by Reece, a UK-based developer who built this tool after seeing holiday let hosts and letting agents struggle with the complexity of the new visitor levy schemes. We are a small, independent product — not affiliated with any council, tourist board, or booking platform.
Our goal is straightforward: make it impossible to file an incorrect return, and make the process fast enough that compliance stops being a burden.
Contact
For general enquiries: hello@levydesk.co.uk
For privacy and data requests: privacy@levydesk.co.uk