Virginia Beach Meals Tax: What Restaurants Must Collect

The Virginia Beach meals tax is 6% on top of 6% sales tax. See what food is taxable, how food trucks and grocers comply, and how to set up your POS.

Adrian ReyesSenior Payments & Fintech Editor

November 1, 2026 · 8 min read

Charcuterie board with sliced meats, pickles, green peppers and cheese on a wooden table with beer bottles and wine glass

Photo: Pixabay

On this page 8 sections

How the Virginia Beach Meals Tax Works
The Virginia Beach Restaurant Tax Rate Is 12% All In
What Counts as a Taxable Meal, Including at Grocers
Meals Tax for Food Trucks in Virginia Beach and Event Vendors
Tips, Delivery Fees and Service Charges Need Their Own Rules
Set up Your POS so the Return Is Easy
Monthly Filing With the Virginia Beach Commissioner of the Revenue
Watch the Rate After the November Election

Key takeaways

As of November 1, 2026, prepared food in Virginia Beach carries a 6% city meals tax plus 6% sales tax. That's 12% combined, filed on two separate returns.
Set up the city meals tax and the state sales tax as two rates in your POS. Tag every item and fee, and get written guidance from the Commissioner of the Revenue on unclear categories.
Food trucks and event vendors need one tax profile per city, because each city sets its own meals tax.
You pay card processing fees on the tax you collect. In the illustrative example, that's about $296 a month on $100,000 of taxable sales.

Restaurants, food trucks and grocers in Virginia Beach charge a 6% city meals tax on prepared food. The 6% Virginia sales tax comes on top of that, so a typical restaurant check carries 12% in tax. The Virginia Beach meals tax went from 5.5% to 6% on July 1, 2025, and the city's fiscal 2026-27 budget kept it at 6%. You collect it from the customer, hold it for the city, and file and pay it every month with the Virginia Beach Commissioner of the Revenue. Rates here are current as of November 1, 2026.

How the Virginia Beach Meals Tax Works

A meal is taxed twice, by two different governments, and each tax is handled by a different office. The sales tax is a state tax, and you file it with Virginia Tax. The meals tax is a city tax. It's assessed and audited by the Commissioner of the Revenue, the constitutional office that assesses every Virginia Beach local tax except real estate tax. According to the city's budget briefing as reported by WTKR, Virginia Beach keeps all of the meals tax plus 1 percentage point of the sales tax.

The city calls the meals tax a trustee tax, and the name matters: the money was never yours. You hold it in trust for the city between the sale and the return.

Customers notice the two lines. A Virginia Beach restaurant owner told WHRO in 2025 that diners sometimes ask whether they were taxed twice. They were taxed once by each of two governments. Printing "VA Sales Tax" and "VB Meals Tax" as separate lines on the receipt answers the question before a server has to.

The Virginia Beach Restaurant Tax Rate Is 12% All In

City Council approved the half-point increase in its fiscal 2026 budget in May 2025 by a 10-1 vote, and it took effect July 1, 2025. It was the first increase since 2002, according to WHRO. In spring 2026 the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association asked the council to cut the rate to 3.5%. The adopted fiscal 2026-27 budget kept it at 6%.

Tax	Rate in Virginia Beach	Who you file with
Virginia sales tax (includes the city's 1% local share)	6%	Virginia Tax
Virginia Beach meals tax	6%	Virginia Beach Commissioner of the Revenue
Combined on a restaurant meal	12%	Two separate returns

If you have locations in more than one city, don't copy your Virginia Beach tax setup to the other stores. WHRO reported in May 2025 that combined rates on meals were 12.5% in Norfolk and 12% in Chesapeake. In Richmond the combined rate was 13.5%, and the meals tax alone was 7.5%.

Worked Example: One $80 Dinner Check

These numbers are illustrative. Assume a table orders $80 of food and drinks and both taxes apply to the same $80 subtotal. The guest adds a voluntary $16 tip, and your blended card processing cost is 2.9%.

Virginia Beach meals tax: $80 × 6% = $4.80
Virginia sales tax: $80 × 6% = $4.80
Check before tip: $89.60
Card charge with tip: $105.60

Card processing fees are charged on the full transaction amount, and that includes the tax. At 2.9%, the $9.60 of tax on this check costs you about $0.28 to process. Now scale it up. Say you have an illustrative $100,000 month of taxable food and drink sales, and 85% is paid by card. You collect $12,000 in tax, $10,200 of it comes in on cards, and you pay about $296 in processing fees to move money that belongs to the state and the city. You can't carve the tax out of the fee. You can control your overall rate and pricing model, so include the tax line in any review of your restaurant and bar payment processing.

What Counts as a Taxable Meal, Including at Grocers

The meals tax depends on the food, not the type of business. WTKR summarized the city's description of the tax: it covers prepared meals sold in bars, restaurants, drug stores, groceries, cafes, convenience stores, grills, diners, fairgrounds, event venues, fast food, drive-in and take-out businesses. Take-out is included. So is the hot case at a convenience store.

In grocery markets, the line runs through the middle of the store. Food your staff prepares to be eaten right away, like a hot bar plate or a made-to-order sandwich, clearly owes the meals tax plus full sales tax. Packaged groceries that a customer takes home to cook are not meals. Virginia also taxes groceries for home consumption at a reduced sales tax rate, while prepared food pays the full rate. A grocer can end up handling at least three tax treatments at one register.

The hard cases sit in between: cold deli salads by the pound, party trays, whole bakery cakes, coffee poured at the register. The city code's definition of "meal" and Virginia Tax's prepared-food rules decide these. Ask the Commissioner of the Revenue for written guidance on each category you're unsure about, keep it on file, and set up your POS to match. A written answer protects you in an audit. A cashier's guess doesn't.

Meals Tax for Food Trucks in Virginia Beach and Event Vendors

Fairgrounds and event venues are on the city's list. A festival booth or a truck parked at the Oceanfront collects the same 6% meals tax as a dining room. Each Virginia city sets its own meals tax on food sold inside its limits, so a truck's rate can change when it crosses a city line. A Saturday lunch in Norfolk and a Sunday event in Virginia Beach may need two different tax setups, and each city's sales have to be reported to that city.

For food truck payment processing, that means four habits:

Build one POS tax profile for each city you serve, and switch to the right one at the start of each service day.
Keep a daily log of where the truck operated. If you close one batch per location, your batch reports also serve as the record.
Ask each event organizer in writing whether the event or you will handle vendor meals tax. Don't assume.
If your business is based outside Virginia Beach, ask the Commissioner of the Revenue what license and meals tax account you need before your first event in the city.

Oceanfront summer weekends also test your hardware. On a July Saturday, cellular mobile terminals and a charged spare matter more than any tax setting. Our guide to taking card payments at farmers markets and pop-ups covers the connectivity side.

Tips, Delivery Fees and Service Charges Need Their Own Rules

A voluntary tip the guest writes in belongs to the staff and is generally not part of the taxable price of the meal. Mandatory charges are different. Virginia's state and local rules cover automatic gratuities and service charges specifically, with conditions. How a charge is labeled and how it's distributed can change whether it's taxed. Delivery, corkage and event fees raise the same kinds of questions.

Set up every fee as its own item with its own tax setting. Then confirm each setting with the Commissioner of the Revenue and Virginia Tax. If you sell through delivery apps, ask each platform whether it collects and pays the Virginia Beach meals tax on your orders. Check its tax report against your own return every month so no sale gets reported twice or left off. How tips get to staff is a separate question, covered in whether you can deduct card fees from employee tips.

Set up Your POS so the Return Is Easy

Most meals tax errors start in the POS, not on the return. A clean setup:

Create two tax rates, "VA Sales Tax 6%" and "VB Meals Tax 6%," instead of one combined 12% rate. The city return asks for the meals tax separately, and if the council changes the rate, you edit one line.
Assign taxes by category. Prepared food and drinks get both taxes. Retail merchandise such as T-shirts or bottled sauce gets sales tax only. Grocery staples get only the reduced grocery rate, after you confirm it with Virginia Tax.
Set gift card sales as non-taxable. Tax is generally collected when the card is used to buy a meal.
Add separate tax profiles for trucks and catering jobs outside the city.
Run the month's tax report and match it to your return before you file.

If you run a dual pricing program or cash discount, ask your accountant which price is the taxable sales price. Make sure the POS calculates tax the same way on cash and card receipts. Our walkthrough on setting up dual pricing at a restaurant covers receipts and signs. If you're replacing hardware anyway, MannyPay's POS systems include Clover, Valor and Dejavoo models. Test the tax setup on any new system before your first live shift.

Monthly Filing With the Virginia Beach Commissioner of the Revenue

You file and pay the meals tax monthly. You can do both through VBePay, the Commissioner of the Revenue's online portal for monthly trustee taxes on meals, lodging, transient occupancy and admissions. The same portal handles business license applications and renewals. Sales tax is filed separately with Virginia Tax.

Check your due date in VBePay or with the office and don't miss it. The city charges a late filing fee on late returns. Two habits prevent most problems. First, move the tax you collect into a separate account with each deposit so it never ends up covering payroll. Second, before you file, match the POS tax report against your batch settlements and cash deposits, so voids, refunds and comps don't throw the return off.

Watch the Rate After the November Election

The rate could change again. Restaurant owners have pressed City Council candidates to lower it ahead of the November 2026 election. At least two candidates have proposed cuts, including one plan to lower it half a point each year. The city budgeted about $115 million from the 6% meals tax for fiscal 2026-27. Its budget office estimated that cutting the rate to 3.5% would have cost about $48 million, so any cut will compete with other spending. The last change came through the annual budget and took effect July 1.

If your POS already has the meals tax as its own rate, a rate change takes five minutes to update. If it doesn't, fix that this month. If you'd like a second look at your tax setup, terminals and processing costs together, request a free quote and a MannyPay specialist will respond within one business day.

Sources

About the author

Adrian Reyes

Adrian Reyes is Senior Payments & Fintech Editor for Beyond the Swipe, covering credit card processing, merchant accounts, payment technology and processing fees.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.