An Applebee’s customer who posts on TikTok as @jdmacias77 shared a video showing a payment kiosk that suggested an $11.30 tip on a $49.49 bill, an amount that matches 20% of the check after sales tax was added. Fox News Digital reported on the video on Oct. 29, 2026, noting that a 20% tip on the pre-tax $49.49 would have been $9.90.
The gap was about $1.40, small on one meal but enough to start a broader conversation about how restaurant payment screens figure the tip. According to the video, the screen indicated that tips were calculated after tax and before discounts, Fox reported.
What the TikTok Video Showed
In the TikTok video posted by @jdmacias77, the customer checked the kiosk’s suggested gratuity against a phone calculator. The meal’s subtotal was $49.49, and the after-tax total was $56.50, according to the Fox News Digital report.
Multiplying $49.49 by 0.20 gives $9.898, which rounds to $9.90, the figure shown on the calculator in the video, Fox reported. Multiplying the after-tax total of $56.50 by 0.20 gives exactly $11.30, the amount the kiosk suggested.
Fox did not name the customer or the location of the restaurant, and it did not report view or like counts for the video. The outlet said it reached out to Applebee’s and to the customer for comment. No response from Applebee’s was included in the report.
Why the Tax Base Matters
The question is less about one bill than about which number a percentage is applied to. Toast, a restaurant point-of-sale company, explains the setting in its support guide on calculating tips before or after taxes. By default, Toast calculates suggested tips on the pre-tax amount, and a restaurant can switch to the post-tax total in its back-office settings, the guide says.
Toast’s own example uses a $10 sandwich with 10% tax. A 20% tip on the pre-tax price is $2.00, while the same 20% on the $11 after-tax total comes to $2.20, according to the guide. On a family dinner, the difference grows with the size of the check.
Diners who like to check the menu before going to a restaurant often do the math on the bill, too, and the after-tax setting is one of the things that can make a suggested tip look higher than expected. Automatic charges show up in travel as well, as this breakdown of the hidden costs of cruising points out with daily gratuities, and tipping is one more line item to plan for alongside these tips and tricks for traveling cheaply.
How Americans Feel About Suggested Tips
The video landed in a long-running debate. A Pew Research Center survey of 11,945 U.S. adults, conducted Aug. 7 to 27, 2023, found that 72% say tipping is expected in more places than it was five years earlier. In the same survey, 40% opposed businesses suggesting tip amounts, 24% favored the practice and 32% were neutral.
Pew also found that 92% of adults say they always or often tip at sit-down restaurants, and 57% said they would tip 15% or less for an average meal there. Those numbers help explain why a suggested 20% figured on the after-tax total can stand out to a diner watching the bill.
The conversation also connects to household budgets heading into the holidays, when restaurant meals, travel and gifts stack up, one of the reasons Americans are dreading the holiday bills this year. Customs differ abroad as well, and the laws and rules about food in other countries show how much dining expectations vary from place to place.
What a Restaurant Owner Said About the Settings
Robert Mahon, managing partner of Mahon Hospitality Group in New York City, told Fox News Digital that tipping setups differ by business. “It varies from restaurant to restaurant,” he said. “The systems come with default settings, but the restaurant can usually change them.”
Mahon said his group uses Toast, which defaults to pre-tax tipping and can be switched in the back office, Fox reported. He told the outlet he believes gratuities should be based on the pre-tax amount, since diners are tipping on the food, drinks and service rather than on the tax.
He also stressed transparency. “If someone hits 20%, they should know what they’re leaving 20% on,” Mahon said. He added that he would want to see the full receipt before attributing the entire difference to tax, according to Fox.
Fox also cited a separate restaurateur who said Applebee’s should be able to adjust its system to calculate tips before tax, and noted an earlier case at Dave & Buster’s in which customers questioned suggested tips that appeared to be based on after-tax totals.
Checking the Base Before Tapping a Button
For diners, the takeaway from the video is practical. A suggested-tip screen shows percentages, but it does not always make clear whether those percentages apply to the subtotal or the total with tax. Comparing the suggested dollar amounts with the subtotal on the receipt shows which base the screen is using.
Where a screen offers a custom tip option, a diner can enter a specific dollar figure instead of a preset percentage. Mahon’s point about transparency applies on both sides of the counter: a percentage means little until it is clear what it is a percentage of.
Applebee’s, which opened its first restaurant in Decatur, Georgia, in 1980 and is owned by Dine Brands, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the chain, had not responded publicly in the Fox report. Whether the after-tax setting was a choice by that location or a broader policy was not addressed.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: m01229 – CC BY-SA 2.0/Wikimedia Commons
