Eating out just got expensive. Here's how

Eating out at restaurants after GST implication is now simpler. Earlier eating out at a restaurant used to be a task when it came to calculating bills. While the printed bills were a saviour with all breakups shown, extra-cautious customers would scrutinize bills twice to make sure the restaurants aren’t calculating it wrong, which wasn’t an uncommon then. But the new era of GST is supposed to bring relief to people. Lesser complications of taxes would mean easier way of doing business.

When you eat outside your home from today, you would be glad to see a simpler bill arriving at your table. However the price will be higher now. Restaurants have been categorized into two areas: non-AC and AC restaurants. Eating out in AC restaurants would amount to 18% tax as against 10.6 % charged (including VAT and service tax) earlier. Roadside dhabas or low cost restaurants will attract 12% GST on food bill. Eating at five stars will be as expensive as always attracting a GST of 28%.

With all restaurants and eateries adapting the GST bills, your bill would have two components a State GST and Central GST dividing the 12% or 18% equally.

We have sourced a sample bill from social media from Facebook user Aman Chadha who had posted on a Food category page. The bill shows that 18% tax has been levied on his food bill this morning at an AC restaurant at Sonepat in Haryana.

The food bill of Rs 540 has attracted 18% tax amounting to Rs 97.20. The grand total of the bill including tax thus becomes Rs 637.

Here’s the sample of the bill

(Image credit: Facebook)