“No tax on tips” is an industry plant • Hacker News Board

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#341

Post by caleblloyd » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 12:59 PM UTC

vultour wrote: post #332

gmadsen wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mechanism to move labor costs to the consumer. On some delivery apps , the driver can decide which jobs to take based on the pre-service tip. So the companies have effectively put the responsibility to pay driver's base wage on the users themselves, while the company still takes a huge corporate cut

I suggested we do this at work. We’ll add a tip field to our Jira tickets and whoever’s ticket is worth the most gets priority. Oh you submitted a production incident a week ago? Sorry, there’s not even $5 on it, we filter those out.

We may just get this, along with a $7.25 per hour base wage!

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#342

Post by coldtea » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 12:59 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #273

voidUpdate wrote: post #165

What confuses me most is when you are given the option to give a tip before any service has been given. On deliveroo, for example, I have the option to tip the driver while I'm at the checkout. Why would I give a reward for good service when I have no idea if the service is even good? There's already a rider fee as part of my bill, so it doesn't make any sense to me to give them more money at that point

> when you are given the option to give a tip before any service has been given [...] why would I give a reward for good service Are there still customers giving tips as "a reward for good service"? I'm trying to imagine a curve representing the distribution of "quality of service". What shape is the curve, and where on it would a 20% tip and a 0% tip be?

>Are there still customers giving tips as "a reward for good service"?

That's the only way people give tips here (not US tho)

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#343

Post by alexriddle » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

lithos wrote: post #270

rhplus wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely most customers would benefit from knowing that they’re bidding for service? Don’t call it a tip, but a bid or priority fee.

You already are able to pay more for 5-20 minutes of "priority".

All that this does is ensure you don't get stacked with another order ahead of you (so the delivery is direct from the restaurant to the person who ordered) in theory.

It doesn't help with situations where drivers are multi-apping (accepting orders across multiple apps and juggling them). The drivers don't even know you have priority.

edit: and in the US where you can definitely see the tip up front, you will almost always find that the order will get picked up quicker if you increase the tip by the equivalent of the priority fee. But you may well get stuck with a delivery before yours.

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#344

Post by shit_game » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #330

gmadsen wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mechanism to move labor costs to the consumer. On some delivery apps , the driver can decide which jobs to take based on the pre-service tip. So the companies have effectively put the responsibility to pay driver's base wage on the users themselves, while the company still takes a huge corporate cut

> It is a mechanism to move labor costs to the consumer. How does this work? The corp already handles some form of payment to the worker, especially when you tip as part of a card payment. And in both cases, the consumer foots the bill. How's it different from paying the worker more and asking for more money upfront?

It moves the real cost of the additional labor from the prices displayed for items (like you would see in a B&M grocery store) to some tertiary part of the purchase process that is displayed 1) after the used has gone through the effort of app navigation and selecting their purchases and 2) has been through the majority of the purchase funnel and self-selected as a high-prospect sale. This helps keep the listed prices for items in these apps relatively comparable to their in-store listed prices, acting to convince the user the sale is reasonable (similar to online sellers making up for low listed prices with high shipping prices). Moving this additional cost to some tertiary step lessens the impact of goods pricing seeming too high by adding a "small optional fee" at the end of the purchase process that the user is expected to subconciously understand is effectively a bid on labor. I'd imagine the psychology behind it is depressing.

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#345

Post by walterbell » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

afthonos wrote: post #318

walterbell wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there still customers giving tips as "a reward for good service"? Are there customers giving tips for other reasons? Any examples?

In the US, the tip is an expected part of the expense of eating out (and increasingly having any human in the loop). I hate it, and I really wish it wasn’t the case, but it pretty much is. If you say “I didn’t tip because the service was what I expected”, you’re pretty much considered an asshole. (Incidentally, this is also one of the reasons why the costs of eating out in the US and seem so much lower. Most people w…

Relative numbers (e.g. 1% above or below an average) can ferry signals to both humans and data mining algorithms.

https://plus.maths.org/content/information-surprise

> Shannon wanted to measure the amount of information you could transmit via various media. There are many ways of sending messages: you could produce smoke signals, use Morse code, the telephone, or (in today's world) send an email. To treat them all on equal terms, Shannon decided to forget about exactly how each of these methods transmits a message and simply thought of them as ways of producing strings of symbols. How do you measure the information contained in such a string?

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#346

Post by coldtea » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

vladvasiliu wrote: post #335

liotier wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France here - no tip is the norm, tip is for service above & beyond... But, contrary to the USA, everyone gets a proper living wage !

Depends on when you are. Making minimum wage while living in Paris isn't exactly a "proper living wage".

Still it's not the scam that passes for wage in the US (especially considering cost of living and other expenses). And Paris can be anything, from expensive neighborhoods to project suburbs.

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#347

Post by walterbell » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

huvarda wrote: post #226

voidUpdate wrote: post #165

What confuses me most is when you are given the option to give a tip before any service has been given. On deliveroo, for example, I have the option to tip the driver while I'm at the checkout. Why would I give a reward for good service when I have no idea if the service is even good? There's already a rider fee as part of my bill, so it doesn't make any sense to me to give them more money at that point

In a Louis Rossmann video (i think it was the one on food delivery guys on e-bikes) he mentions never tipping in app but leaving a note that says he will give a cash tip if the driver brings the food straight to his door. That seems like a decent compromise as it doesn't let the app take a cut from the tip and makes so the driver actually goes the extra mile to 'deserve' the tip.

Thank you for this tip on analog defense against digital dark patterns!

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#348

Post by alexriddle » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

huvarda wrote: post #226

voidUpdate wrote: post #165

What confuses me most is when you are given the option to give a tip before any service has been given. On deliveroo, for example, I have the option to tip the driver while I'm at the checkout. Why would I give a reward for good service when I have no idea if the service is even good? There's already a rider fee as part of my bill, so it doesn't make any sense to me to give them more money at that point

In a Louis Rossmann video (i think it was the one on food delivery guys on e-bikes) he mentions never tipping in app but leaving a note that says he will give a cash tip if the driver brings the food straight to his door. That seems like a decent compromise as it doesn't let the app take a cut from the tip and makes so the driver actually goes the extra mile to 'deserve' the tip.

Weirdly on Reddit I keep getting the doordash and ubereats communities pushed at me - there is a very strong view amongst people using these apps that anyone who says they will "give a cash tip" will not actually do it, so it's probably not as beneficial as you might think.

The tips on the apps nominally do go entirely to the driver.

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#349

Post by coldtea » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

huvarda wrote: post #226

voidUpdate wrote: post #165

What confuses me most is when you are given the option to give a tip before any service has been given. On deliveroo, for example, I have the option to tip the driver while I'm at the checkout. Why would I give a reward for good service when I have no idea if the service is even good? There's already a rider fee as part of my bill, so it doesn't make any sense to me to give them more money at that point

In a Louis Rossmann video (i think it was the one on food delivery guys on e-bikes) he mentions never tipping in app but leaving a note that says he will give a cash tip if the driver brings the food straight to his door. That seems like a decent compromise as it doesn't let the app take a cut from the tip and makes so the driver actually goes the extra mile to 'deserve' the tip.

>* but leaving a note that says he will give a cash tip if the driver brings the food straight to his door.*

Why, where else would they take the food? Leave in at the patio? Drop it on the lawn?

Re: “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

#350

Post by tiagod » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #240

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #232

I never understood tips... You have a farmer that grows/raises food, butchers and others that 'process' it, you have a team of cooks who prepare/cook the food, and you're supposed to tip the the person who just brings the foor from the kitchen to your table, maybe 20, 30 meters away?! Sadly, tipping is sprading all over europe too with POS terminals bothering you more and more often for tips.

I grew up in France and tipping in restaurants was definitely a thing, albeit on an entirely different scale than in the US. Leaving a few francs (I'm not young) was common practice. With cash payments growing more rare, and without the ability to tip easily with cards, maybe it became much less common. That said, I don't disagree with your comment on how it's spreading. What I don't love about the terminals asking f…

>Now, in Portugal, we're starting to see cases of "here's the price with a 3€ tip (for example), if you want to pay that", and you awkwardly get to say "no thanks I want to pay the actual price", which I find very unpleasant.

I've lived in Portugal for 30 years and I never had that happen to me. Where are you seeing this? I could only imagine it in a place that only serves tourists and foreigners.