BANGALORE: Going out and grabbing a meal at a fine dining with family or friends have become very common thing in our society. Most of the bachelors depend on the restaurants and packaged foods. But have you ever wondered why the bill is so high even though you calculated according to the restaurant menu and placed the order? This is because of the various taxes and charges applied to your bill by the restaurants. It is important to check and verify your bills before you pay off, reports rediff.com.

Some of the restaurants have an extra service charge which is supposed to be the tip that customers pay for good service. Thus in such restaurants avoid paying tips so that you might be able to save double expense. The value added tax (VAT) is another way of paying service charges; it is supposed to be calculated at 14 pct on 40 pct of the bill not for the entire amount.

Anita Rastogi, partner, PwC India states that "If the restaurant is indeed charging service tax at 14 per cent on the entire amount, rather than 5.6 per cent, the amount collected from customers should be paid to the government, There could be situations of over-charging when restaurants include the bottled water sold in their bill and charge VAT over and above that. Customers might miss this item.

As well as the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) for the packaged food items are fixed by the government. Thus a consumer doesn’t have pay an extra VAT charge applied by the restaurants as per the rules. As a consumer if you find restaurants overcharging then you are supposed to point this out to Tax department.

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