GST groups, and the restaurant rate

Tax comes from the group on the dish — and which group is right depends on the rooms.

Every dish carries a GST group, and the group carries the rate. Tax on a bill is worked out from the group, never typed.

Do this

1. Code — FOOD5, BEV18.
2. Name — what it is for.
3. Rate — the percentage. Restaurant food is 5% without input credit or 18% in specified premises; the rooms decide which, not the kitchen.
4. Add.
5. Every dish carries one of these; the tax on a bill is worked out from the group, never typed.

• Groups are yours to maintain: a rate, a name, and the dishes that use it.
• The screen refuses a rate "not one India uses" — the slabs are a short list, and a typo of 1.8 for 18 would misfile a whole season's tax.
• Restaurant food and hotel rooms are not on the same slab, and a restaurant's applicable rate depends on the establishment. Set it from your own registration and your accountant's advice, not from the room tariff.
• Change a group's rate and it applies from that point forward. Bills already raised keep the tax they were raised with, which is what makes the GST reports reproducible.

If a bill shows a rate that surprises you, look at the dish's group first. That is where it came from.

5% or 18%? The rooms decide, not the kitchen

Restaurant service is 18% with input credit inside specified premises, and 5% without input credit everywhere else. Premises are specified if either:

• any room was sold above ₹7,500 a night in the preceding financial year — the year that has finished, not today's rate card; or
• the hotel has declared that it opts in.

Both halves matter. A hotel that sold one suite at ₹8,000 last year is specified premises this year even if it has since dropped its rates, and a hotel below the line can still opt in so that it can claim input credit.

Onboarding → Restaurant GST shows the evidence — the highest room night and where that figure came from — and takes your declaration. The system never decides for you: the position is yours to take and to answer for.

It then checks every dish against it. Where they disagree the board says so, names the dishes, and offers to move them in one action. Bills already raised are never changed — the tax on a bill is the tax that was charged.

A standalone restaurant with no hotel is never specified premises, so it is always 5%.

This is worth revisiting every April, because the answer can change without anybody touching the menu.

A new hotel is 5%. Premises are specified by what was *sold* in the finished year, not by the rate card. A hotel that has not traded through a financial year has sold nothing above ₹7,500, so its restaurant charges 5% — until it declares otherwise, or until an April arrives with a year of rooms behind it.