Splitting this fairly
Tick what you had and the total at the bottom follows you. If you are
splitting evenly instead, divide the total by however many of you there
were — the arithmetic is the easy part, and the parts below are the
ones people get wrong.
Service and tax follow the food
A service charge and a sales tax are both percentages of what was ordered,
so they should be split in the same proportion as the food. Splitting the
food by item and then the service equally quietly moves money from whoever
ate least to whoever ate most. A cover charge is the exception: it was
charged per person, so it splits per person.
Check whether the tip is already on the bill
Look for a line reading service, servizio, gratuity, or a bare percentage.
If one is there, the tip has been added and anything further is optional.
Adding twice is the most common tipping mistake, and it happens most often
on a card terminal that suggests a percentage of a total which already
contains the tip.
Shared plates
Anything that arrived in the middle of the table splits between the people
who actually ate it, not across everybody. The same goes for a bottle of
wine at a table where somebody was driving.
More: how to split a bill fairly ·
tipping by country ·
service charge versus tip ·
splitting in another currency