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“No tax on tips” is an industry plant

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

#511

Post by Izkata »

aaplok wrote: post #60
chriscrisby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a weird way to say a sizable majority of tipped workers do pay taxes and will benefit from this.

Beware the logical fallacy. "A implies B" does not mean that "not A implies not B". Workers who earn too little to pay taxes (A) will not benefit from a tax cut (B). But workers who earn enough (not A) may still not benefit (not B), for example because their employer indirectly pockets the difference. That is actually being argued in the article. So this is indeed the appropriate way of formulating the statement: at…

Pretty sure they are aware, they included the qualifier "a sizeable majority" instead of implying it applied to all.

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

#512

Post by fn-mote »

limagnolia wrote: post #31
littlexsparkee wrote: post #3

Some interesting points: ~40% of tipped workers don't make enough to get taxed anyway, no tax on tips would actually advantage better paid workers like casino dealers who don't need the help. NToT is described as a campaign to distract from minimum wage increase initiatives.

They may not pay any income taxes, but they almost certainly pay FICA taxes. If the NToT includes FICA, they would be better off. However, I still think it is terrible idea to advantage some employment classes and means of compensation over others like that.

Yes, creating special exceptions like this is an awful idea.

More carve-outs complicating the tax code and pandering to specific constituents is a bad thing.

It reminds me of listening to a story of how day care business owner-operators are not required by law to contribute to Social Security, don’t, and are then screwed at the end of their life because they don’t have any way to retire.

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

#514

Post by s1artibartfast »

edmundsauto wrote: post #483
amosslade wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>creates inequality Did you mean that it rewards them for their efforts?

For food service, specifically waiting tables - how much of the tip is because of effort and better service - and how much is due to the attractiveness and general demographic characteristics of the server?

Good question. I would say mostly the former. I imagine you might say the latter.

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

#515

Post by fph »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #168
johnisgood wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping is a thing in Eastern (to be more accurate: Central) Europe too, but where I live, tipping is not taxed. Actually, let me be more accurate: people who pay with credit card always tip in cash, as there is no way to tip with a credit card[1]. :P If you buy anything with a credit card, the total amount must always be identical to the sum of the prices of the products, it can never be more, so cannot include tips…

"Cash is untaxed" is a universal rule; there's a food stall that only sells deep fried Vietnamese eggrolls (and has for decades), they prefer cash; in part because cash is untaxed and they may forget to document every sale on occasion, but also because they do relatively low amount transactions ( It's also why "knowing a guy" can be useful, tradesmen coming in on their off hours to do a job for cash.

In my country (euro-land), transaction fees are often brought up by shopkeepers as a bogus excuse, but in real life banks offer plenty of percentage-only plans without fixed transaction fees.

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

#516

Post by afthonos »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #441
afthonos wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The OP above you is guaranteed to have had their food spat in or otherwise tortured as punishment for not tipping. Tipping isn't just a social thing, there are real physical punishments for not doing it!

I feel like you’re making their point. If the “punishment“ for paying sticker price is you getting actually hurt, then it’s not a tip, it’s extortion. A social custom that the customary price of something is 30% more expensive than what the sticker says is unfortunate. A social custom of extortion is abominable.

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

#517

Post by jameshart »

cherryteastain wrote: post #199

Doesn't this also open a huge opportunity for tax evasion? Say I am a small business owner selling a $90 item which is $100 with state sales taxes. I say if you are willing to tip me at least $90, the item is $1. The buyer saves $9 from state sales taxes, and I save on income taxes because tips are exempt from tax.

Yes, this rarely seems to come up in discussions of restaurant tipping culture in the US but especially given that a lot of municipalities have additional hospitality or food and beverage taxes over and above sales tax, there’s a strong incentive to keep menu prices low by encouraging tipping, as a way to minimize the taxable portion of the bill.

If I need to make sure a server earns $200 after tax for a shift in order to be able to attract them to work for me, it is definitely to my advantage for as much of that money as possible to come directly from the customer as tips.

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

#518

Post by righthand »

Yeah we just had to sell out medicare, bomb Iran, destroy USAID, and now restaurant workers can blame the public more for their thief employers not paying them a living wage. I have happily nearly eliminated eating out partially because tipping has become ridiculous but restaurant prices are still very high post-pandemic. Fuck tipping.

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

#519

Post by firefoxd »

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.

Fun fact, we had this at an old job. It was a charge code field in Jira. It was required whenever you requested work from an external team. It operated like a credit card with a set budget. If you bothered other teams a lot, you ran out of money. Department heads set their price.

It sounds great in theory. But a black market quickly developed, and people figured out ways to circumvent it. People created tickets for their own teams and shared laptops.

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

#520

Post by ecb_penguin »

kelnos wrote: post #207
ecb_penguin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay for your meal Not sure you know what tipping is, but it's not paying for the meal. It's paying for the service. 1. I like being able to pay for better service 2. Despite what people like to think, everywhere in the world has appreciated tips. I've never had a waiter refuse extra money. Literally dozens of countries, you get better service if you tip.

Not sure where you have (or haven't been), but I've been to several countries where I've tried to tip, and it's confused or even embarrassed the staff. They insisted I take my change. Granted, this was 15-20 years ago, and unfortunately tipping has become more pervasive, not less, so maybe if I were to revisit those places, things would be different. But I do know this is still the case in Japan. Some Japanese servic…

> But I do know this is still the case in Japan. Some Japanese service workers or small business owners will even be insulted if you try to tip.

It's absolutely not. Have you actually been there, or are you repeating things?

https://www.reddit.com/r/JapanTravelTips/comments/1cyj0nu/ti...

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