GST & VAT Billing for Restaurants in India, UAE, Thailand and the UK
Tax on a restaurant bill trips up more POS setups than anything else. Here's what to get right for GST in India, VAT in the UAE and Thailand, and the UK's VAT-inclusive menus — clearly explained.
Tax is where a restaurant bill most often goes wrong — and a wrong bill is both a compliance risk and a trust problem with your guest. The rules differ by country, but the discipline is the same: prices, rounding and tax naming must be driven by settings, never hard-coded. Here's a plain-language tour.
This is general guidance, not tax advice. Confirm current rates and rules with a qualified professional in your country.
India: GST on restaurant services
Restaurant supplies in India are generally taxed under GST, split into CGST and SGST components, and shown as such on the invoice. What your POS must handle:
- Correct component split and naming (CGST / SGST) on the printed tax invoice.
- Rounding at the right boundary, so the total matches to the paisa.
- Number formatting in the local convention (lakh / crore) on reports.
The trap: coding "GST" and the ₹ symbol into the receipt template. The moment you open a second outlet in a different regime, that assumption breaks.
UAE: VAT
The UAE applies VAT to restaurant sales. Your invoice needs the VAT shown clearly, the amount rounded correctly, and totals expressed with the local currency and grouping. A compliant tax invoice also carries the right business identifiers.
Thailand: VAT
Thailand likewise applies VAT. The naming, the rate and the number formatting differ from both India and the UAE — which is exactly why "just change the label" isn't enough.
United Kingdom: VAT, with prices that already include it
In the UK the menu price shown to a guest must include VAT, so the bill works backwards: the 20% is inside the £12.50, not added to it. Food eaten in is standard-rated; most cold takeaway is zero-rated; a discretionary service charge sits outside VAT and, since October 2024, every penny of it belongs to staff. Your POS has to price inclusively, book sales net of the VAT inside them, and give you the nine boxes of a VAT return for Making Tax Digital.
The principle that saves you
Whatever the country, the fix is architectural: read currency, tax naming, rate and number formatting from a country setting, and price every quote — website, QR order, dine-in bill — through one engine. Do that, and:
- The website price and the printed bill always agree.
- Discounts re-price the bill so tax follows correctly, instead of subtracting a raw number and leaving tax wrong.
- Opening in a new country is a setting change, not a rebuild.
A quick self-test for your current POS
- Change the country. Does the currency symbol, tax label and number format all follow?
- Apply a coupon. Is tax recomputed on the discounted amount?
- Compare a website quote to the dine-in bill for the same items. Do they match exactly?
If any answer is "no", tax is being computed in more than one place — and that's a bug waiting to become a fine.
Vigorous POS keeps currency, tax naming and formatting in country settings for India, the UAE, Thailand and the UK, and prices every order through a single engine — so the quote and the bill can never disagree.