Taxing prepared food and grocery at different rates

If everything you sell is taxed the same way, you do not need this screen. The Tax % on your location covers it, and nothing changes.

You need it when your jurisdiction taxes some of what you sell differently — most often a deli or market that slices prepared food beside packaged grocery, in a town that adds a meals tax to the prepared side only. One blended rate across that basket is the wrong tax on at least one line, in both directions: you over-collect from the customer on one and owe the difference out of your own pocket on the other.

What Turtini does and does not know:
We do not know your jurisdiction's rates, we do not decide which of your items count as prepared food, and we do not know whether a meals tax applies to you. Those are your determinations, made with your accountant. Nothing on this screen is filled in for you, and nothing is guessed.

Setting it up (Restaurant → Settings → Tax categories):
1. Add a category and name it in your own words — "Prepared food", "Grocery", "Cold case".
2. Give it one rate per authority you file with separately, each with the authority's name: "State sales tax" 5.3, "Town meals tax" 4. Enter rates as a percent.
3. Save, then assign items to categories on the Menu tab — each item's form has a Tax category box. An item you leave unset uses the location's own Tax %, exactly as before.

Why one rate per authority instead of one combined number:
A meals tax is filed separately, to a different authority, on a different schedule. A single 9.3% that is really 5.3% plus 4% cannot be filed without splitting it back apart by hand at quarter end — and a split redone from a rounded total does not come back to the same cents. Keeping them separate carries the split all the way through to your reports.

A category with no rates cannot be saved:
"Grocery, no rates" looks like "grocery is untaxed" and is indistinguishable from "I have not finished setting this up", and those two have opposite consequences. If a category genuinely is not taxed, add a rate of 0 and name it. Then zero is on the record as your answer.

Removing a category that items are using:
The screen asks where those items go before it will remove it — another category, or no category (your location's own rate). It will not leave items pointing at a category that no longer exists. An item like that is not untaxed: the register REFUSES the order, at the counter, with a customer waiting, and it says which category is missing.

Checking your work:
Under the categories is a preview of a basket — one of your own items per category — with the tax broken out per rate, and a total of what you would file per authority. That is the same arithmetic the register runs. If a meals tax is landing on your bag of chips, this is where you see it.