1Where the facts come from
Tax comes from the CBIC and the GST portal. Food licensing comes from FSSAI, its FoSCoS portal and the regulations as printed in the Gazette of India. Market figures come from named studies, such as the NRAI India Food Services Report, and each one carries its year.
Some numbers are rules of thumb that operators share rather than audited statistics. A food cost of 28–32% of sales is one. When a guide uses one, the same sentence says so. A figure that is widely repeated but has no source we can trace is left out, or named as unsourced, as the statistics page does with the claim that 73% of Indian restaurants fail.
2Who writes the guides
The CountStand team writes the guides, with AI writing tools. A draft is a starting point, not a source: every limit, rate, fee and date in it is checked against the primary source before it stays in.
We sell restaurant software, and the guides mention it. When a guide says what CountStand does, that sentence has to be true of the product on sale today. An automated check reads every page of this site before each release and stops the release if a page claims something the product does not do at launch. Nothing reaches the live site until the founder approves the release.
3Who reviews them
Guides on tax and licensing are meant to be reviewed by a practising chartered accountant, who is then named on the guide. No guide has had that review yet. Until one has, its byline reads “Draft pending CA review”, and the guide asks you to check the specifics with your own adviser.
We would rather show where a guide stands than suggest a review that has not happened.
4How a guide stays current
Each guide shows the day it was last rewritten and states the law as of that day. The date moves only when the words change, never to make a page look fresh.
GST rates and FSSAI rules change. When one does, the guides it touches are rewritten and dated again. The FSSAI turnover limits that took effect on 1 Apr 2026 are an example: every guide that gives them now says registration up to ₹1.5 crore of turnover, a state licence up to ₹50 crore, and a central licence above that.
5When we get it wrong
Write to contact@countstand.com with the guide’s address and what is wrong. We reply within two working days. If the source agrees with you, we correct the text and change the guide’s date. If it does not, we send you the source we used.