Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“No tax on tips” is an industry plant

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 618 posts

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

#401

Post by flanked-evergl »

wat10000 wrote: post #391
flanked-evergl wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never ever once has an employer given me a pay raise when they got a tax cut or a pay cut when they got a tax hike. Taxes do not feature into salary negotiation. Employers pay as little as they can get away with, while employees want to get as much money as they can. If you need theoretical worlds with no correspondence to anything ever in actual history to justify your claim, then maybe there is not that much to it.

Where do you live that employer-paid taxes on employee pay have been cut during your career?

I have never lived anywhere where there are employer-paid taxes on employee pay. Have you? Do you even know of a country like that?

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

#402

Post by afthonos »

rtp4me wrote: post #389
afthonos wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>If you say “I didn’t tip because the service was what I expected”, you’re pretty much considered an asshole Sorry, this is definitely not the case. Many times the worker is doing exactly what is needed and nothing more (eg: pour a beer in a glass, handing me a pizza). Why would I be considered an asshole if I didn't tip? That is ridiculous. As other people have said, tipping in the US has really become obnoxious. I…

I 100% agree with your value judgement. Nevertheless, the social pressure exists.

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

#403

Post by FeloniousHam »

xp84 wrote: post #371
vladvasiliu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The gready sleazeballs who like the "tipping" system (mostly, restaurant owners) would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt. While 10% was customary in the first half of the 20th century, the standard tip gradually increased to 15% by the 1980s. In 2025 it's not uncommon to see little shortcut buttons for 20, 25, 30%. You can see where this is going…

Ah yes, the greedy sleazeballs. If you knew that the total cost of the meal would be the same, say $20 for the meal, does it to you matter if: 1) you pay $20 "no tip" and the owner pays non-tip minimum wage, or b) you pay $16.50 for the food and $3.50 separately to the server in the form of a tip ?

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

#404

Post by rdm_blackhole »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #357
TrackerFF wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that it is spreading not due to culture, but due to how all new point of sale systems / card terminals come with a "tip" feature implemented. I'm from Europe, and have traveled here extensively. Tipping is pretty rare, but for the past maybe 5 years, almost all new payment terminals have the tipping option.

This is absolutely true, but that is exactly how culture spreads now. Through products/software/media. American business software, American movies, American YouTube channels. They will inject American problems and solutions into your country, like it or not. Microsoft may treat your privacy slightly better because of the GDPR, but those invasive systems are still there, toggled off. Waiting for Microsofts lobbying to…

Microsoft doesn't need to chip at the privacy laws of the EU, the EU is doing that itself by introducing massive state surveillance laws every 6 months.

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

#405

Post by wat10000 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #401
wat10000 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live that employer-paid taxes on employee pay have been cut during your career?

I have never lived anywhere where there are employer-paid taxes on employee pay. Have you? Do you even know of a country like that?

The United States has federal payroll taxes of which half are paid by the employer.

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

#406

Post by rayiner »

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

Tipping is more like a form of price discrimination. It allows restaurants to indirectly charge different customers different amounts based on ability to pay.

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

#407

Post by mindcandy »

xp84 wrote: post #371
vladvasiliu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The gready sleazeballs who like the "tipping" system (mostly, restaurant owners) would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt. While 10% was customary in the first half of the 20th century, the standard tip gradually increased to 15% by the 1980s. In 2025 it's not uncommon to see little shortcut buttons for 20, 25, 30%. You can see where this is going…

> would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt.

It is my understanding that this is literally the origin of tipping.

After the abolition of slavery, there were many black people newly looking for work. And, there were employers looking for workers, but unwilling to pay money to black people.

So, someone got the idea to promote that tipping was something fancy European aristocrats did. And, you can be fancy like they were by tipping my workers (that I refuse to pay).

Tipping was previously seen as un-Americanly classist. And, most states tried to ban it when it started to pick up steam. But, it was too late. So many employers were enjoying unpaid labor that the bans were repealed.

Later, when Minimum Wage was established, workers who lived on tips alone were almost all black. So, unsurprisingly, tipped workers were excluded from the wage regulation. And, today they are only acknowledged as fractional minimum laborers.

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

#408

Post by asats »

pc86 wrote: post #377
oellegaard wrote: post #71

It’s crazy that this still happens in the US. Tipping is a thing of the past. Pay for your meal and have the restaurant pay their people for their work. End of story.

What's crazy is that you can so confidently claim "tipping is a thing of the past" when it's... not? You can think tipping should go away, that's a completely valid viewpoint. But your statement is just objectively wrong. I see this a lot (not specific to HN) - some person doesn't like $THING, so they just declare that that thing is bad, or "a thing of the past," or whatever.

Or confidently declaring the _true_ motivations of companies/people, like they, the random internet person, for sure know why some company or a famous person are doing something, and express it as a statement of fact and an agreed upon common sense and not a speculation based on nothing.

Most seen on reddit but seems to be becoming commonplace on here as well.

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

#409

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #403
xp84 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gready sleazeballs who like the "tipping" system (mostly, restaurant owners) would prefer to pay all their employees $0 and have all diners/customers/etc pay 100% of the wages out of guilt. While 10% was customary in the first half of the 20th century, the standard tip gradually increased to 15% by the 1980s. In 2025 it's not uncommon to see little shortcut buttons for 20, 25, 30%. You can see where this is going…

Ah yes, the greedy sleazeballs. If you knew that the total cost of the meal would be the same, say $20 for the meal, does it to you matter if: 1) you pay $20 "no tip" and the owner pays non-tip minimum wage, or b) you pay $16.50 for the food and $3.50 separately to the server in the form of a tip ?

The problem is that the customer does not know the cost of the meal; they typically rely on the business owner to be upfront about that. Tipping is guilt-motivated drip pricing. The only thing the commenter got wrong is that the restaurateur has to prime the customer with some cost so they can voluntarily add a percentage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing

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

#410

Post by tarentel »

fireflash38 wrote: post #316
TylerE wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like you get better or more food, or get the food faster since all that depends on the kitchen Oh, trust me, go to a decent place, be a regular, tip decently (not even extravagantly), you absolutely get looked after. For instance, several of my usual lunch spots my usual fountain drink is often "water" on the bill.

Isn't that then stealing from the owner? I just don't think of a way you can have tipping and it not create perverse incentives like that.

It's likely not like this everywhere but I've become a regular at a few places over my life time and asked about this. At least where I've been, it is actually all tracked. Generally, at least at bars, the people coming in and tipping well, are people who come in often and spend a lot to begin with so over the long run they end up making it back anyway. And honestly, when you're new to a city/place and don't have a lot of friends/are single, and you walk in somewhere and are greeted by name and served your usual without asking it's a nice retreat.
Post reply on HN