facebook – The Bach

Every time I dined out, which is pretty much every weekend, I ended up paying ~30% extra on items, which I did not fully understand. There were VAT, service charges, service tax and on top there is a tip! 30% is a considerable amount and can easily buy me a couple of coveted dishes, for which I generally have ‘reserve’ apatite even after a full meal. Nevertheless, I paid it every time and returned hungrily.

Recently came across a Facebook post telling me what I did was wrong! The full content of the Facebook post is pasted bottom of this post. It claimed India restaurants charge service taxes on top of total bill amount rather than just service charges. This is that hallelujah moment, where you realize you’ve been cheated but you are not alone. Generally, I don’t believe Facebook posts, but this post is telling me just what I wanted to hear.

So basically, so far, this is what I understood:

Service charge is optional
Service tax is on service charge rather than the full amount.

Next first thing I tried is one of those fact-checking sites, like this one. Unfortunately, Hoax or Fact site declares it FACT! But if you see the explanation is about service charges rather than service tax itself.

All this joy was short-lived when I read what I did not want to hear. Apparently, the bill was right, they were according to law, which includes “don’t dine outside”. Read this for complete understanding on service tax – Service Tax in Restaurants – What the law really says!

Service portion in an activity wherein goods, being food or any other article of human consumption or any drink (whether or not intoxicating) is supplied in any manner as a part of the activity, at a restaurant – 40 %
Service portion in outdoor catering wherein goods, being food or any other article of human consumption or any drink (whether or not intoxicating) is supplied in any manner as a part of such outdoor catering – 60 %

Let me summarize

Service tax and service charges are two mutually exclusive overheads on your bill
Service charges are ‘almost’ mandatory tips, will be distributed with all employees of the restaurant (technically).
The restaurant has an obligation to let you know that there will be service charges, even before you dine/order. In case no such display or abysmal service, you can refuse to pay that (technically)
Service tax, on the other hand, goes directly to the government, will be 40/60% either on top of the total food bill, which includes VAT.
Never trust Facebook post on first look.

Happy dining out with your inflated bills!

—————————————————————————————————————————–original content

SERVICE TAX At Restaurants – VERY IMPORTANT!!!
Interesting. I find restaurant bills often so confusing. I just give up and pay the amount shown n the bottom line. Perhaps we shouldn’t.

Incidentally, I also resent the inclusion of Service Charges in restaurant bills, because it assumes that I was satisfied with the service. Just a matter of principle. Service Charge should be something I leave behind at my personal discretion. I recently demanded that the service charge be removed as the service was non-existent. After a short – very short! – Discussion, it was removed. About Service Tax….. Be aware

This happened at the restaurant. Let me explain. We had been to several restaurants recently. I observed that “service tax” was being misused in the way it was being charged to customers.

Let me give an example.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Food and Beverage = Rs. 1000.00
Service Charges @ 10% = Rs. 100.00
Service Tax @ 4.94% = Rs. 54.34 (on F&B + Service Charges)
VAT @14.5% = Rs. 145.00
Total = Rs. 1299.34
As per the definition – “Service Tax can be charged ONLY for the services provided to the customer”.

Now, see what is happening here in the above example. Service Tax should be charged only on the Service Charge amount i.e Rs.100 ONLY, and NOT on the entire amount (1000+100). In this example, the customer should be charged only Rs 4.94, whereas he has been charged Rs. 49.00 extra. Where does this money go? Only the restaurant owner and the chartered accountants who work for them know.

• So, I have started asking them the questions – and am surprised to see the reaction from famous restaurants. Either they say: “Sir we cannot change the format of the bill – so , we will recalculate and tell you the revised amount. You may pay only that.”

• “Sir, you do not need to pay the Service Tax amount itself”!! I now have 3 to 4 restaurant bills, but for which I have paid only the service tax on the service charge and NOT on the total amount.

Every bill MUST carry the TIN number and Service Tax Number, if they charge it. So . . . , I ask for the Service tax number if it is not available in the receipt that they provide.

As we cannot go to any government official and ask them to get this right – because of our system. Please remember – we cannot change any political leader – but we can change ourselves. If we change ourselves – things will change. Please do share this with every one of your friends and known people. Ask for the right tax calculation and Pay only the tax which is supposed to be paid. Verify every bill and receipt that you make payment on.”Please share if you think its worth”

.. too many actually. They all are insanely wealthy, highly overpriced/overrated and all these because they have millions of followers! Also, all this fame achieved by them is never justified; obviously something else should have deserved it. I kept on pinging on Religion, I don’t give a damn about Gaga; it’s time for a take on Facebook. 🙂

Earlier I wrote about “why do I hate twitter” (I still do). I claimed tweets being nothing more than shouting randomly at all directions, in other words “spamming“. Facebook is just improvised version of that,. one can shout within his friends group. Anyone who logs in, (apparently to check if there are any new comments on “chooo chweeeet” video, can learn you are standing in a queue for pop-corn. God forbid, what would have happened to the world if he did not have a chance to know that!

My first and foremost issue with Facebook is, it is a “blog-killer”. All my friends who used to blog, which was really picking up in late 90s and early 10s, now don’t have time to blog. Instead time is spent on fertilizing neighbours crops in Farmville or watching “too good… every Indian must watch this” videos. Blogging could have become a real alternative to mainstream media, who apparently require multiple reminders for unbiased and honest duty. Blogging could have dominated internet with citizen journalism. But now it’s official, they have sung RIP for blogging. Tweets and Facebook status has taken its place along with LOLs.

image source and complete infographic

Who are we fooling? Let’s be honest. Do million tweets and likes on “Save Aasia Bibi” do any difference? Even if they are tried in Capital letters? Blogs, wikis and forums run in parallel to media with more strong opinions creating awareness among (at least) netizens. Tweets and Pages really fail to fill in this shoe. Let me remind you again, these new age opinion are weighed more by number of retweets and like, less by content itself. I feel Facebook is fancy but ineffective way to run a campaign and twitter is its disabled buddy.

Agreed that Facebook had a considerable role in couple of social revolution (related to Blasphemy, Iranian stoning etc), but it’s just that Facebook had been there at right time at the right place. What Facebook has done extra which any other social media couldn’t do?

Also agreed that Facebook is a very good way to maintain contact book and way to reconnect old (and new) friends, Facebook cannot claim that for itself. It’s not the first time that someone integrated a messaging engine, contact book and an instant messenger. Facebook did that as any other social network, rest of them just did not get the hype and love, that’s all. There are good things in Facebook; I am not here to list them for being politically correct. My concern is with Facebook-mania, lot of good ventures gets shut down for not being able to gather their due attention.

I hated twitter and now Facebook; don’t call me old fashioned Web1.0 guy. I am not. By the way Web2.0 is sooo Web1.0. By this time we should’ve been in 4.0. But thanks to all those attention and time spent in “share” s and “like”s we are still stuck here. One very such example, Google Wave never got attention it deserved. Now they closed it down, a step backwards and said “sorry, internet is not ready for next version of Web”

One example on “how Facebook groups” are so useless (thanks to Evening Standard, London for pointing it out). There

Mark Zuckerberg Vs Julian Assange – source (jitbit.com)

is a page called “save children of Africa” which was around for few years now. Last time I checked it had more than 1.8 million members. As its name states it is established to raise funds (only interpretation of word “save”) for poor malnourished children in Africa. In all those years of “like”ing and “join”ing it managed to raise little over 13000$!. That’s ridiculous. Simple arithmetic, it is less than 0.001$ per person, not even annual!. Now, compare it with Wikipedia banner campaign that raises its running cost every year without a like button in it.

In last couple of years I got at least 50 requests to join a page called “stripey”. It is created by some concerned Facebook members to save tigers in India. A large group with so many cute tiger photo uploaded. It says, if I join – tigers get saved! And how? No clues so far. No facebook-er does anything more than clicking “join”, or May be, its moral support for tigers on Facebook :-).

Final note, heard apple registered phrase “there is an app for that”. I think Facebook also should register phrases “there is a useless and silly page for that”.

And if you think Facebook is doing great as a product, read this:

The disparity between the number of Facebook users claiming to be concerned about this issue and how little money they were willing to put up says quite a lot about the business. Loads of customers were happy to commit themselves to a click to show how caring they are. Parting with cash is less popular.
Mark Zuckerberg ‘s creation — a nifty piece of kit, for sure — has 500 million users. And revenues of about $2 billion. So all those people who spend all those hours poking and messaging each other are worth only $4 each — in sales, not profits. A year.
It’s hard to think of another business model where so many customers and so much use can equate to so little revenue. If Facebook started charging for its services, how many of those 500 million would stick around? If the answer is zero, isn’t that the true value of the company?
Now, analysts reckon that Facebook may report a profit for 2010 of $473 million. That’s works out as a price/earnings ratio — the traditional way of measuring how highly a company is rated — of 106. By comparison, Apple , a business that has taken the old-fashioned approach of making and selling things, has a PE of 22.