Restaurant ka GST bill 2026 mein — 5 ya 18, ₹20 lakh wali limit, aur slip pe kya likha hona chahiye.

A standalone restaurant — dine-in, takeaway, a café, a dhaba, a cloud kitchen — charges 5% GST without input tax credit. That has been the rate since 2017 and the September 2025 rate rationalisation ("GST 2.0", which collapsed most goods into 5% and 18%) left it where it was. It is 2.5% CGST and 2.5% SGST on the slip.

The 18% with input credit rate is for restaurants inside hotels that are specified premises — room tariff above ₹7,500 a night, declared for the year — and for outdoor catering. From 1 April 2025 a hotel declares that status on its previous year's actual room rates, and a hotel below the line can opt in if the input credit is worth more to it than the lower rate. Unless you are inside such a hotel, that is not you.

The register does not pick the rate. You pick each dish's GST slab in the dashboard on your CA's advice, and the register carries it to the paper on every sale. Change a slab tomorrow and yesterday's bills keep the tax they actually charged. The guide is your first GST bill.

The number quoted most often, and most often wrongly, is ₹40 lakh. That is the threshold for a business that sells goods. Restaurant food served at a table or packed for takeaway is, under GST, a supply of service (Schedule II of the CGST Act; SAC 9963), so the services threshold applies: ₹20 lakh a year in most states, ₹10 lakh in the special-category states (the North-East, Himachal, Uttarakhand, J&K).

Below that, registration is optional — and a shop that is not registered must not charge GST on the bill. In EasyKOT that is one switch: GST off, dishes ring at their menu price, and the slip prints with no tax line at all, which is the honest document for a shop under the threshold.

The exception that catches people: selling through Swiggy or Zomato makes registration mandatory, whatever your turnover. The aggregators require a GSTIN to list you.

A restaurant that does not serve alcohol and has turnover up to ₹1.5 crore (₹75 lakh in the special-category states) can opt for the composition scheme: 5% of turnover paid flat, a quarterly CMP-08 and an annual GSTR-4 instead of monthly returns, and no input credit. It exists to make compliance cheap for a small outlet whose CA visits once a quarter.

• A composition dealer cannot charge GST on the bill. The document is a bill of supply, not a tax invoice, and it must carry the line "composition taxable person, not eligible to collect tax on supplies".
• No aggregators. A composition dealer cannot sell through Swiggy or Zomato, and cannot supply inter-state. For a dine-in-and-parcel restaurant that is usually fine; for a cloud kitchen it rules the scheme out.
• Your CA decides. The choice is between a lower compliance load and the flexibility to list online; it depends on the shop, not on the software.

Since 1 January 2022 the platform pays the 5% GST on restaurant food it delivers, under section 9(5) of the CGST Act — the aggregator is treated as the supplier for that tax. You still report those sales in your returns, and you still need a GSTIN to be listed. The platform's own commission and delivery charges to you are a separate service, taxed at 18%, which is one of the lines that turns a 22% commission into a bigger number on the settlement statement.

What that means for the register: a walk-in bill carries your 5%, a Swiggy order is settled by Swiggy, and the two must not be mixed up in your own invoice series. The menu pricing post works through what an aggregator order actually leaves you after commission, GST on the commission and the platform fee.

Rule 46 of the CGST Rules lists what a tax invoice must carry. For a restaurant bill to a walk-in guest, the lines that matter:

• Your name, address and GSTIN — the supplier block at the top.
• A consecutive serial number, unique for the financial year, up to 16 characters, letters, digits, hyphens and slashes only. Consecutive means no gaps — a missing number is what an officer asks about first.
• Date of issue.
• HSN/SAC — restaurant service is SAC 9963 (996331). A business with turnover up to ₹5 crore may leave the code off bills to unregistered guests, and EasyKOT does not print it today; your CA will say whether your bills need it.
• Description, quantity and value of each line; the taxable value; the rate; and CGST and SGST as separate amounts (IGST only inter-state, which a restaurant almost never is).
• Whether reverse charge applies (for a restaurant bill: no), and a signature or digital signature — a printed slip from the register counts.
• The guest's name and address only if they are registered or the bill is ₹50,000 or more — so, for almost every table, not required.

The FSSAI licence number is a separate rule (the Food Safety authority's, since October 2021), not Rule 46. EasyKOT does not print it yet — there is no field for it in the invoice identity — so for now it lives on the menu and at the premises. When it ships it will be one more field in the same Settings page.

None of that is typing at the counter. Fill your invoice identity once in the dashboard — GSTIN, address, state and state code — pick the slab on your dishes, and every settle prints a slip with the supplier block, a consecutive number per till (T1/2627/00001, minted when the bill is made so a walkout never burns one), the lines, CGST and SGST split in half, round-off, the total and the tender. A reprint keeps the number and date and is stamped DUPLICATE. At day close the register lists every number issued and warns about any gap.

Not tax advice. Rates, thresholds and schemes are as published on 7 September 2026 from the sources named on this page; they change, and your outlet's case is your CA's call. What the software guarantees is narrower and more useful: the slab you set is the slab that reaches the paper, on every sale, on every till — with the internet up or down.