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Montana levies no statewide sales tax. It is one of five states that do not, alongside New Hampshire, Oregon, Alaska and Delaware.
For a restaurant that means something unusual: the receipt you hand a diner typically has no sales tax line at all. Subtotal, then total, with nothing between them. Visitors from states with 8 or 9 percent meal taxes regularly assume the receipt is incomplete, and servers get asked about it.
It is not incomplete. There is nothing to collect.
This also means a Montana restaurant receipt carries no state tax registration number, because there is no statewide sales tax to register for. A receipt format designed for a taxing state will have fields that simply have nothing to go in them.
Montana does levy some targeted taxes, but they sit elsewhere. There is a statewide lodging facility use tax on accommodation, and separate taxes on rental vehicles and medical marijuana. None of them apply to restaurant meals.
A small number of Montana towns levy a local resort tax, and restaurants inside them do collect it.
These are tourism-dependent towns that have been formally designated as resort communities and where local voters have approved the tax.
The rate is a small local percentage, and it differs between towns. Rates change by local ballot, so confirm the current figure with the town itself rather than relying on any statewide table, including this page.
What it applies to is set out plainly:
So prepared food and alcohol served inside a resort community are taxable, even though the same meal served anywhere else in Montana is not.
Towns that levy one include West Yellowstone, Whitefish, Big Sky and Red Lodge. Worth noting two that are frequently listed in error: Philipsburg does not levy a resort tax, and Seeley Lake voters have repeatedly rejected one.
The state does not administer this tax. The Montana Department of Revenue says so directly: local resort tax is administered by the resort area districts, not by the state. If you are registering, filing or querying a rate, you deal with the town, not with Helena. That catches out operators who assume it works like a state sales tax.
You may keep an administration allowance. Whitefish, for example, allows merchants to retain a percentage of the resort tax collected as compensation for the cost of administering it. Structures vary by town, so check your own ordinance, but the principle is that collecting the tax is not meant to be unpaid work.
Where a resort tax applies, show it as its own line between subtotal and total, labelled as resort tax rather than sales tax. The two are not the same thing and a diner who queries it deserves a receipt that names it correctly.
The restaurant — name, logo, address including the town, and phone. The town matters more here than in most states, because it determines whether a tax line belongs at all.
The transaction — date and time, receipt or check number, server or register, table or order number, guest count
The items — each dish and drink with quantity and price, modifiers beneath the parent item where they apply
The money — subtotal, resort tax as its own line only if applicable, tip line, total, payment method
Showing subtotal and total as separate lines matters even when they are identical. A single figure gives a diner nothing to check, and an expense reviewer nothing to verify. The same principle runs through every restaurant receipt format.
For business diners, line-level detail is what makes the receipt usable as an itemized receipt on an expense claim.
Tip on the pre-tax subtotal where a resort tax applies. Outside resort communities the question does not arise, since subtotal and taxable total are the same number.
Mandatory service charges and voluntary tips are treated differently for tax purposes in most states. In a Montana resort community, check how your local ordinance treats a mandatory gratuity before assuming it falls outside the resort tax base.
Use it to issue receipts for meals your restaurant actually served, to reprint a copy for a diner who lost theirs, or to settle your receipt layout before configuring a POS.
Do not use a generated receipt to represent a meal that was not sold, to inflate a total, or to make a receipt appear to come from a restaurant you do not operate. Creating a receipt that misrepresents a transaction is prohibited under our Terms of Use, and where it supports an expense claim it is fraud.
Put your own restaurant name and logo on anything you issue. Other formats are in receipt templates.
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