Should the tip be on £80 or on £86.40?

Choose one and say it. Eighteen percent of £80 food is £14.40, so the table total is £100.80. Eighteen percent of the £86.40 taxed total is £15.55, and the table total is £101.95. The gap is £1.15, or about £0.29 for each of four people. Both are common. Mixing them at one table is what starts the argument, not the size of either tip. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

Do I tip again if service is included?

A 12.5 percent charge on £86.40 is already £10.80. Adding another 18 percent puts on £15.55 more, £26.35 together, which is 30.5 percent of the taxed total. Add a further tip only if you meant to. If the charge is removed, tax remains, and an 18 percent tip on £80 food is still £14.40. Show the charge and the tip as separate rows. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

How do five people split £100.80?

They pay £20.16 each, because 5 times £20.16 is £100.80. Totals that do not divide leave a penny or two: five rounded shares can be two pence heavy, and someone should take that two pence. If four people throw in £20 cash, the pot is £20.80 short, not roughly done. One card payer and exact transfers avoid a £4.20 surplus from rounding every share up to £21.

How should a shared starter be split?

Give it a headcount. A £10 starter across five people is £2 before tax and tip. Tax at 8 percent adds £0.16, and an 18 percent tip on the £2 adds £0.36, so each person owes £2.52. Leaving the starter off everyone's item list strands £12.60. Use the same weights for food, tax, and tip when the rest of the bill is split by what each person ordered.

What if the expense policy caps the tip?

Apply the cap to the right base. Fifteen percent of £80 food is £12, so an 18 percent tip of £14.40 leaves £2.40 unreimbursed. Food, tax, and the capped tip total £98.40, not the £100.80 you paid. A mandatory £10.80 service charge may be claimable when the voluntary tip is not, so keep those lines apart on the receipt. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

Tips, Tax, and Splitting a Bill Cleanly

Tax and tip are two different bases

A bill with £80 of food and 8 percent sales tax has £6.40 of tax and a pre-tip total of £86.40. An 18 percent tip on the food alone is £14.40, so the table pays £100.80. An 18 percent tip on the £86.40 total is £15.55 to the nearest penny, and the table pays £101.95. The two habits differ by £1.15. Neither habit is a moral rule. Calculators King editors recommend choosing the base before anyone opens a phone, because £1.15 becomes an argument only after four people have already done the sum differently.

Four people sharing £100.80 pay £25.20 each. Four people sharing £101.95 pay £25.49 each, rounded to the penny, with a spare penny to place on one card. The per-person gap is £0.29, small enough to ignore and large enough to make one friend feel overcharged if the methods were mixed. Say "18 percent of the food, tax separate" out loud. We recommend writing the three lines on a napkin if the table is splitting unevenly: food, tax, tip. The result is a clean gross, not a ruling about what servers should be paid.

A service charge is not a second tip

A 12.5 percent service charge on £86.40 is £10.80. If the table then adds a voluntary 5 percent of £86.40, that is another £4.32, and the combined extra is £15.12, close to the £15.55 tip from the previous section but built from two labels. Paying 18 percent on top of a 12.5 percent charge that was already included would add £15.55 to £10.80, or £26.35, which is 30.5 percent of £86.40. Read the bill for the words "service included" before you choose a percentage. We recommend tipping on top only when the charge is optional or absent.

Removing a service charge you dislike does not remove the tax. If £10.80 comes off £86.40 plus £10.80, the remaining total is £86.40, and an 18 percent tip on the £80 food is still £14.40. The evening costs £100.80, not £86.40. People who subtract the charge and then split £86.40 five ways, at £17.28, have not left a tip at all. Decide the tip as its own line. A calculator should show charge and tip in separate rows so a removed charge cannot silently delete the tip. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

Five people and the leftover penny

Five friends splitting £100.80 pay £20.16 each, because 100.80 divided by 5 is exact. Splitting £101.95 by 5 is £20.39, which is £101.95 only if four people pay £20.39 and one pays £20.39 as well: 5 times 20.39 is £101.95. This one happens to divide. A £102.00 total does not: 102 divided by 5 is £20.40 exactly, but a £101.98 total gives £20.396, which rounds to five times £20.40 equals £102.00, two pence heavy. Put the extra two pence on the person who paid the booking fee, or reduce one share by £0.02.

Cash makes the remainder obvious. If four people put in £20 and the fifth is short, the pot holds £80 against a £100.80 food-and-tip example, which is £20.80 short, not "about right." Round each cash share up to the next pound only with consent: five times £21 is £105, which is £4.20 more than £100.80 and needs a plan for the change. We recommend a single card payer and a bank transfer of the exact £20.16. Mixed cash and cards is where £4.20 goes missing. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

Uneven shares need weights, not vibes

Someone who ordered the £32 steak should not pay the same as someone who ordered the £12 salad when the table agreed to split by what they ate. Their food ratio is 32 to 12, or 8 to 3. On £44 of those two dishes, the steak owes 32 divided by 44 of the subtotal. Add tax and tip by the same weights. If the whole table's £14.40 tip is split by food shares, a person who ate 40 percent of the food owes £5.76 of the tip, not £14.40 divided by 4. We recommend one weighting rule for food, tax, and tip.

A shared starter breaks a pure item split. A £10 starter across five people is £2 each before tax and tip. Tax at 8 percent adds £0.16, and an 18 percent tip on that £2 adds £0.36, so the starter costs each person £2.52. Forgetting it leaves £12.60 on the table that everyone assumes someone else included. List shared plates as their own row with a headcount of 5. The calculator can total a personal row plus a shared row, which is harder to do in your head after a second drink.

Percentages that look generous and are not

A "round up to £110" habit on the £100.80 bill leaves a £9.20 tip if you meant to replace the £14.40, or a £23.60 tip if you added £9.20 on top of it. Those are 11.5 percent and 29.5 percent of the £80 food. Name the percentage you think you are paying. If the goal is 20 percent of the food, the tip is £16 and the total with tax is £102.40. Rounding that total to £105 adds £2.60 more, which is another 3.25 percent of the food. We recommend rounding the per-person share, not the percentage, once the percentage is chosen.

Double-check a phone that defaults to tip-on-tax. If you wanted £14.40 and the phone suggested £15.55, the difference is the £6.40 tax times 18 percent, which is £1.15. Over a year of 40 similar meals that default is £46. It is not an emergency, and it is not nothing. Set the base once. Calculators King editors recommend saying the base aloud when you are the person holding the card, then splitting the exact total. A tip calculator is there to show the lines, not to embarrass the table. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

What to record if work is reimbursing you

Expenses desks often refund food and tax but cap the tip. If the cap is 15 percent of pre-tax food, the allowed tip on £80 is £12, not the £14.40 you left at 18 percent. You are personally £2.40 out of pocket, and four colleagues sharing that unallowed tip owe £0.60 each. Claiming the whole £100.80 when the policy allows £80 plus £6.40 plus £12, which is £98.40, overclaims by £2.40. Attach the itemised bill. We recommend writing the policy percentage on the claim so the £12 is explained. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

A service charge that is mandatory may be reimbursable when a voluntary tip is not. The £10.80 charge and the £14.40 tip should not be one blob called "gratuity." Separate lines let the claimant keep the £10.80 inside the claim and leave the £14.40 to the diners. Mix them and a clerk may refuse the lot. Keep the receipt that shows 12.5 percent as a charge. The arithmetic is simple once the labels are honest, and it saves a rejected claim three weeks later. Keep the unit, the count, and the name of the formula in the same sentence as any figure you copy into a report.

Open the worksheet

The matching page is the Tip Calculator. It opens with a worked example, names the formula, and keeps the steps next to the result. Use it when you want the arithmetic on your own numbers rather than the argument on this page.