Zomato Payout Deductions: What Every Line Means

Your Zomato payout lands as one bank credit, and the statement behind it lists a dozen deduction heads with names that explain nothing. This is a line-by-line decode of that statement. Two of those lines are wrong on most of the guides you'll find, including specialist reconciliation sites, and one of them is costing restaurants real money in mis-filed tax credits.

Key takeaways

• Your settlement is order value minus commission, GST on that commission, payment fees, TDS, and adjustments.
• TDS under Section 194-O is 0.1 percent, not 1 percent. It was cut on 1 October 2024 and plenty of guides never updated.
• TCS should not appear at all on restaurant orders. If it's on your statement, query it.
• "Amount received in cash" is not a penalty. It's Zomato netting off money you already collected on self-delivery orders.
• The platform fee both apps raised is charged to the diner, not deducted from you.

The deductions that should be there

These are legitimate and will appear on nearly every statement.

Commission. The big one, charged as a percentage of order value, and it varies by city, format and your agreement. Note it's computed after platform-funded discounts, which is why the effective rate people quote never matches the headline. We've done that maths in what Zomato and Swiggy commission really costs.

GST on the commission, at 18 percent. Zomato invoices you for its service and charges GST on it. This one matters: that 18 percent is input tax credit you can claim, so it should be booked as a recoverable, not written off as cost. Restaurants on the 5 percent no-ITC scheme cannot claim it, which is a real and often unnoticed cost.

Payment gateway or processing charges. Small per-order amounts on prepaid orders.

Ad spend or promoted listing fees. Only if you opted in. If you see this and never ran a campaign, that's a support ticket. If you did, Zomato's ad terms say the fee comes out of your weekly payout as its own line; Zomato ads for restaurants explains how clicks are counted and what the ads actually earn.

Refunds and cancellation adjustments. These often land in the cycle after the order, which is the single most common reason a week looks short for no visible reason.

TDS under Section 194-O. Covered below, because the rate is where guides go wrong.

"Amount received in cash": the line that confuses everyone

If you do your own delivery and take cash orders, your statement carries a line along the lines of amount received in cash on self-delivery orders, and it is subtracted from your payout.

This is not a penalty and nothing has gone wrong. On those orders your rider already collected the full amount from the customer at the door. Zomato is netting off money that is physically in your till, so it doesn't pay you twice. Your true earnings for that order are the cash you hold, minus the commission and taxes on it.

The reason it feels wrong is timing. The cash arrived on Tuesday and the deduction shows up in a settlement report the following week, so it reads as a mystery subtraction rather than as an adjustment to something you already banked.

Check it the obvious way: total your own cash-on-delivery orders for the cycle and see whether that figure matches the line. If it doesn't, you have either a rider collection problem or a reconciliation error, and both are worth chasing.

Two lines that are wrong more often than not

Here's where most content on this topic, including sites that sell reconciliation software, will mislead you.

TDS under Section 194-O is 0.1 percent. It was 1 percent originally. The Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 cut it to 0.1 percent with effect from 1 October 2024, and the rate has stayed there since. Guides published or copied since then still routinely say 1 percent. On ₹5 lakh of quarterly platform sales that's the difference between ₹500 and ₹5,000 of TDS, so if you're reconciling against the wrong figure your books will never tie out. The provision itself sits on the Income Tax Department's site. It's withheld against your PAN and adjustable against your income tax, so it isn't lost money, it's a prepayment.

TCS should not be on a restaurant statement at all. Since restaurant service was notified under Section 9(5) in January 2022, Zomato pays the GST on those orders as the deemed supplier. CBIC's Circular 167/23/2021 confirms the operator is liable for GST on restaurant services and is not required to file GSTR-8 for them, and no TCS is collected on supplies notified under 9(5). TCS under Section 52 continues to apply to other things sold through a platform, which is why the confusion persists, but not to your food orders.

If your statement shows a TCS line against food orders, raise it. And if an accountant is claiming TCS credit in your GSTR-3B for aggregator food sales, that's worth a conversation, because the credit may not exist.

The same Section 9(5) rule is why you don't remit GST yourself on aggregator orders. We cover that in do you need GST to sell on Zomato and Swiggy.

One more that isn't yours. Both apps raised their platform fee in March 2026. That fee is charged to the customer at checkout. It is not a restaurant deduction and shouldn't reduce your payout.

TDS under section 194-O, now section 393

Since the TDS line is the one restaurants ask about most, here is the whole picture, including a change most guides have not caught up with.

The section number changed on 1 April 2026. The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the 1961 Act from that date, per the government's own announcement, and was written to simplify the law "without altering the underlying tax policy". The 194-O duty now sits in section 393(1), table serial 8(v): a sum for goods or services sold by an e-commerce participant through an e-commerce operator's platform, taxed at 0.1 percent of the gross amount, with no threshold. Statements, Form 26AS and your accountant may use either reference for a while. They mean the same deduction at the same rate.

It is worked out on your gross sales, not on your payout. The Act applies the 0.1 percent to the gross amount of the sale. So on ₹5,00,000 of orders in a quarter the TDS is ₹500, even though the payout after commission and fees is far smaller. If you check the TDS line against your bank credit, it will look too high; check it against gross order value instead.

Cash orders count too. The Act treats a payment a customer makes directly to you, for a sale the platform facilitated, as if the platform paid it. So cash collected on self-delivery orders still goes into the gross amount the TDS is calculated on, which is one more reason the cash adjustment above has to be reconciled properly.

Keep your PAN right. Tax guides note the rate rises to 5 percent if the platform does not have a valid PAN or Aadhaar for you. Check that the PAN on your Zomato and Swiggy partner accounts matches the one you file returns under.

The ₹5 lakh exemption almost never applies. Under the old section 194-O, an individual or HUF seller whose platform sales stayed within ₹5 lakh a year, and who had given a PAN or Aadhaar, was exempt. That works out to under about ₹42,000 a month, so it rarely covers a working restaurant.

Claiming it back. The deduction shows in your Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement against your PAN, and you claim it in your income tax return like any other TDS. Reconcile it every quarter: if a quarter's credit is missing, ask the platform to correct its TDS return, because you cannot claim credit that does not appear against your PAN. At 0.1 percent, applying for a lower deduction certificate is rarely worth the paperwork.

Don't confuse it with TDS you deduct. If you run Zomato ads, the TDS runs the other way: Zomato's ad terms ask you to deduct TDS on the ad fee and send the certificate within 90 days of the quarter's end. We cover that in Zomato ads for restaurants.

The order-level breakup

The summary report gives you cycle totals. Underneath it there's an order-level breakup listing earnings, deductions and payout per individual order, and that's the view worth downloading.

Use it in this order. Check the cycle total against your own order count first, because if the counts agree and the money is right, you're done in two minutes. Only drop into the order-level file when the cycle total is off, then find the orders whose deductions don't match the pattern. Every deduction should trace to a specific order ID. Anything that doesn't is your support ticket.

Working the other way round, order by order, is how people lose an entire evening and still miss the problem.

When the money lands

Zomato settles weekly by default, with a daily option offered to smaller partners. The report generally arrives after the money, not before, which is part of why reconciliation gets skipped.

The full picture on timing, cycle dates and how to reconcile a week without losing your evening is in our guide to the Zomato and Swiggy payout cycle. If you're not listed yet, registering on Zomato and Swiggy covers what you'll need first.

What to do when it doesn't add up

Three checks, in this order, and stop at the first one that explains the gap.

1. Cycle-date mismatch. Orders near the cutoff fall into the next cycle. This explains most "missing" money.
2. Refunds from last week. They land late and against a cycle where you're no longer looking for them.
3. Funded discounts. If you agreed to co-fund a promotion, your share comes off the top, and the effective take can run far above the headline commission rate. That gap is why knowing your real restaurant profit margin per channel matters more than the headline rate does.

If none of those explain it, you have a genuine query, and now you have the order IDs to raise it with.

FAQ

What is "extra cash adjusted" on a Zomato payout?

It's Zomato netting off money you already collected. On self-delivery orders paid in cash, your rider took the full amount from the customer, so that sum is deducted from your bank settlement to avoid paying you twice. Match it against your own cash-on-delivery total for the cycle.

What is the TDS rate on Zomato payouts?

0.1 percent under Section 194-O. It was reduced from 1 percent with effect from 1 October 2024 by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024. Many guides still quote the old 1 percent figure. The deduction is made against your PAN and is adjustable against your income tax liability.

Is section 194-O still valid after the new Income-tax Act?

The deduction continues, under a new section number. The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the 1961 Act from 1 April 2026, and the same e-commerce TDS now sits in section 393(1), table serial 8(v), at 0.1 percent of the gross amount of the sale. Your statement may still say 194-O for a while.

How do I claim the TDS Zomato and Swiggy deduct?

It appears in your Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement against your PAN, and you claim it in your income tax return like any other TDS. Reconcile it quarterly against your gross order value, and ask the platform to correct its return if a credit is missing.

Should TCS be deducted on my Zomato orders?

No. Restaurant service is notified under Section 9(5) of the CGST Act, so Zomato pays the GST as deemed supplier and no TCS is collected on those supplies. CBIC's Circular 167/23/2021 also confirms operators need not file GSTR-8 for restaurant services. A TCS line against food orders is worth querying.

Why is my Zomato payout less than my order total?

Because the settlement is order value minus commission, 18 percent GST on that commission, payment charges, 0.1 percent TDS, and any refunds or funded-discount shares. Cash collected on self-delivery orders is netted off too. Effective deductions commonly land well above the headline commission rate.

Can I claim the GST Zomato charges on its commission?

If you're GST-registered on the regular scheme, yes, the 18 percent on the commission invoice is input tax credit. If you're a standalone restaurant on the 5 percent no-input-credit scheme, you cannot, and it's a real cost that should sit in your margin calculation.

What to do next

Pull one settlement report and one order-level file this week and check three things: that the TDS line reads 0.1 percent, that no TCS appears against food orders, and that any cash adjustment matches your own self-delivery cash total. Those three take fifteen minutes and are where the errors actually live.

Then look at what the exercise tells you. Every rupee on that statement is a deduction from a sale you already made, on a channel where somebody else controls both the transaction record and the settlement. An order taken at your own table settles at menu price, on the night, with nothing to reconcile. Book a short dineomAI demo and see what the channel you control fully is worth alongside the one you don't.