Splitting a restaurant bill with GST, service charge and tip

Six people, one bill, and two of them only had soup. Here’s how to split a restaurant bill fairly, including the GST and service charge lines most people get wrong.

By the ttmm team · Updated 20 Oct 2026 · 2 min read

Equal or item-wise?

Split equally when everyone ordered roughly the same, or it’s a shared-plates meal (biryani, starters for the table). The difference per person is small and nobody wants to do maths at the table.

Split item-wise when the bill is big and orders differ a lot: one person had drinks, one is vegetarian, someone left early. A simple rule: if any one person’s order is less than half of another’s, go item-wise.

Understanding the bill

• Food and drinks: the item prices.
• GST: most restaurants charge 5% on food, shown as CGST + SGST (2.5% + 2.5%). Restaurants in some hotels charge more. The rate is printed on your bill.
• Alcohol is taxed by the state (VAT, not GST), so it may appear as a separate tax line.
• Service charge: under the Central Consumer Protection Authority’s 2022 guidelines, restaurants can’t add a service charge by default or make it compulsory. If it’s on the bill, you can ask for it to be removed. Paying it, or tipping instead, is your choice.

The fair way: share tax and tip in proportion

When you split item-wise, don’t split the tax and tip equally. Share them in proportion to what each person ordered: someone who ordered 40% of the food should carry 40% of the tax and tip.

Example

Shared dishes

For a shared starter or a bottle of wine, split that item only among the people who had it, then continue item-wise for the rest. In ttmm’s Items split, just tick everyone who shared it.

Paying at the table

One person pays and everyone settles later; that’s the fastest at the table. Add the bill to ttmm before you leave the restaurant, while everyone remembers who had what. The split bill calculator works for quick equal or share-based splits without an account.

Questions

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