Before tax — the food and drink line.
Your receipt almost certainly suggests tips on the discounted total. Many servers are tipped out on the pre-discount amount instead. No authority settles this — pick the one you mean.
Pick your state, or type the exact tax off the receipt below.
The number on your receipt always wins. Type it here and the state average is ignored.
We take it out of the tip base so you don't tip on a tip.
Type what each person ordered. Tax and tip are shared out in proportion — not divided evenly.
Discount Calculator
What you save, and what you actually pay.
What you save, and what you actually pay
A discount is easy. What trips people up is the order of operations once tax and a tip are involved — because the discount, the tax and the tip are each calculated on a different number, and moving one moves the others.
The amount before any discount.
As a percentage or a flat amount off.
The bill before the discount, or after it. This one is a choice, not a rule — see below.
Tax is normally charged on the discounted price, since that is what you are actually buying. The tip is the argument.
Tip on the price before or after the discount?
Here is the honest answer: there is no authority on this, and both conventions are alive.
The case for tipping on the pre-discount amount is that your server carried the same plates and cleared the same table whether you had a coupon or not. Restaurant workers say this loudly, and in some places it is enforced internally — servers report being required to tip out a percentage of their pre-discount sales, which means a coupon can cost them money out of pocket.
The case for tipping on the post-discount amount is that it is the number on the bill, and your point-of-sale terminal almost certainly agrees: the suggested tip amounts printed at the bottom of a receipt are usually computed on the discounted total.
We looked for a rule. Emily Post does not address discounts. The IRS does not address it. The confident-sounding claims circulating online about what etiquette “requires” here trace back to marketing blogs citing each other, and we are not going to add to the pile.
Percentages do not stack the way they look
“20% off, then an extra 10% off” is not 30% off. The second discount applies to what is left after the first.
The order does not matter — 10% then 20% lands on $72 as well — but the total never reaches the sum of the two percentages. A flat amount and a percentage do depend on the order, and the shop decides that, not you.
Comped items and voucher deals
If something was taken off the bill because it arrived cold or an hour late, that is not a discount you negotiated — the work still happened, and it usually went wrong in the kitchen rather than at your table. Most people tip on what the bill would have been. Again: convention, not rule.
Voucher deals are the same shape. You paid for the voucher somewhere else; your server did not get a cut of that transaction.