It is half past one on a Sunday, the table has finished, the bill goes down, and a guest puts a finger on the line that says 10% surcharge. Nobody at the table saw it coming. The manager’s instinct is to explain penalty rates. The guest’s instinct is to ask where it said that. Legally, the second question is the one that matters.
The rule the argument turns on
Australian consumer law generally requires a business to display a total price as a single prominent figure, including GST and any unavoidable or pre-selected fee. Restaurants get a narrow carve-out: a venue that applies a surcharge on certain days does not have to print a second menu or a second price column, but only if it states the surcharge clearly. The ACCC’s guidance is specific about the form of words — a menu should carry a statement along the lines of “a surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days]”, and those words must be at least as prominent as the most prominent price on the menu. If the menu carries no prices at all, the surcharge has to be displayed prominently in some other way. The ACCC has issued infringement notices over misleading menus before, so this is enforced, not merely suggested.
A line in six-point grey type at the foot of the last page does not meet a prominence test, and neither does a sign behind the bar that nobody at table twelve can read. The practical test is whether a guest could have known before ordering.
Three different charges, three different rules
| Charge | Status | What has to happen |
|---|---|---|
| Weekend or public holiday surcharge | Allowed | Stated on the menu, as prominent as the most prominent price |
| Card surcharge | Currently capped at your actual cost of acceptance | Ending across the major networks from 1 October 2026 |
| Booking or service fee | Allowed if genuinely optional or clearly disclosed | Must not turn the advertised price into a fiction |
The card surcharge row is the one changing under everyone’s feet. Until now the rule has been that a surcharge must not exceed what that payment type actually costs the business, with the Reserve Bank of Australia setting how cost of acceptance is worked out and the ACCC acting on excessive surcharging. The RBA’s conclusions paper of 31 March 2026 changed the destination: from 1 October 2026 surcharging is removed across the designated networks — eftpos, Mastercard and Visa — and American Express, UnionPay and PayPal are introducing their own no-surcharge rules around the same date, PayPal from 5 October 2026. Lower interchange caps for domestic transactions take effect on the same day, with foreign-issued cards following on 1 April 2027. Enforcement of the no-surcharge rules sits with the card networks rather than the ACCC.
What that means on the floor is narrow. Your weekend and public holiday surcharge is untouched. Your card surcharge is not. If your till adds 1.5% to card tenders, delete the rule rather than switch it off with a note to re-enable it — the cost it recovered is now something you price into the menu or absorb. Ask your acquirer what your fees look like after 1 October before you decide which.
GST, and the item that changes rate when you toast it
GST is 10%, and in hospitality the trap is not the rate but the classification. Food sold for consumption on your premises is a supply of catering and is taxable regardless of what it is or whether it is hot. Hot takeaway food is taxable. Cold basic food taken away can be GST-free unless it falls into an excepted category. So the same sandwich is GST-free from the cabinet and taxable once it goes through the press, and it is taxable either way if the guest sits down at your table.
That is a per-item, per-order-type setting, not a bill-level one, which is the same argument as tax-inclusive versus tax-exclusive menu pricing. A single ticket with a dine-in coffee and a cold takeaway loaf can legitimately carry two treatments, and the bill has to split them out. The ATO publishes a detailed food list and a search tool for the borderline items; use it rather than a rule of thumb.
What this looks like in the system
The surcharge should be a scheduled rule attached to the day and time, not something a supervisor remembers to key in — surcharges applied by hand are applied inconsistently, and inconsistently is how a complaint becomes a pattern. It should print as its own named line on the bill rather than being folded into item prices, so a guest can see what they are being asked to pay for. If you run QR menus, the disclosure has to be on the digital menu with the same prominence as on the card, because that is the menu the guest actually read.
What we will not tell you
Whether to raise your menu prices to cover the card costs you can no longer surcharge, or how a specific item classifies for GST. The first depends on your margins; the second belongs with the ATO’s published lists and your accountant. What we will confirm before you buy is which of these behaviours the system applies automatically in your country and which one someone does by hand.
Checked against the sources named above on 2026-09-20. Rules and platform terms change — confirm anything tax-related with a local accountant before you rely on it.
