The States Where Restaurant Meals Aren’t Taxed Like Everything Else
In several states the tax on your dinner is not the state sales tax. Two of them have no sales tax at all and still tax your meal.
Most tip calculators ask for a sales tax rate as if there were one number per state. For restaurant food there often isn’t. A handful of states tax a prepared meal at a rate that has nothing to do with what you would pay for a t-shirt.
Two states with no sales tax that tax your dinner anyway
New Hampshire has no sales tax. It taxes prepared meals at 8.5%. If you assumed 0% because you know New Hampshire has no sales tax, you assumed wrong — for this one thing.
Montana has no general sales tax either. But ten resort towns — including Whitefish, Big Sky and West Yellowstone — levy a 3% resort tax, and it does apply to restaurant meals. Statewide, the answer is 0%. In Whitefish, it isn’t.
States where meals are taxed at a different rate
The District of Columbia taxes restaurant meals at 10%, against a 6% general rate. Maine taxes prepared food at 8%, against 5.5% general.
Maryland is the awkward one: 6% on food, but 9% on alcohol. A drinks-heavy check is taxed at neither rate — it is taxed at both, on different lines.
Minnesota layers local restaurant taxes on top. Minneapolis and St Paul add downtown restaurant taxes to the state figure, so a meal downtown carries more than the number our dropdown shows.
The number on your receipt always wins
Everything above is a state average or a state rule, and neither is your bill. Local rates stack: county, city, transit district, sometimes a downtown restaurant district. Louisiana currently carries the highest average combined rate in the country at about 10.13%, and “about” is doing real work in that sentence.
This is why the calculator on this site lets you type the tax straight off the receipt, and why doing that overrides the state average completely. The dropdown is there for when you are estimating. The paper in your hand is there for when you are not.
Rates change. We take ours from published state figures and correct them when they move; if you spot one that is out of date, the receipt in your hand is the better authority, and we would rather you use it.