Bill Splitter

Bill Splitter

Bill Splitter divides a restaurant bill unevenly, assigning items to specific people and adding tax and tip proportionally.

How to use it

1. Add each item and assign it to the people sharing it.
2. Set the tax and tip percentages.
3. Read what each person owes.

Splitting tax and tip fairly

Splitting evenly is easy and often unfair, because the person who had a salad and water subsidises the person who had steak and three drinks. Item-level assignment fixes that for the food.

Tax and tip then have to be apportioned. Sharing them in proportion to what each person's items cost is the defensible method: someone whose share is 40% of the food pays 40% of the tax and 40% of the tip. Splitting the tip evenly on top of an itemised bill quietly reintroduces the unfairness you just removed.

When it helps

• Settling a group meal where orders differed a lot.
• Handling shared items like appetisers alongside individual mains.
• Working out what to send someone who paid the whole bill.
• Avoiding the awkward arithmetic at the table.

Common mistakes

• Splitting tip evenly on an itemised bill, which undoes the fairness.
• Forgetting shared items. Appetisers and bottles need dividing among whoever actually shared them.
• Tipping on the post-tax total, when the convention is to tip on the pre-tax subtotal.