“No Tax on Tips” Includes Digital Creators, Too
hollywoodreporter.com175 points by aspenmayer 3 days ago
175 points by aspenmayer 3 days ago
PSA: the "No Tax On Tips" provision expires:
> New deduction: Effective for 2025 through 2028, employees and self-employed individuals may deduct qualified tips received in occupations that are listed by the IRS as customarily and regularly receiving tips on or before December 31, 2024, and that are reported on a Form W-2, Form 1099, or other specified statement furnished to the individual or reported directly by the individual on Form 4137.
* https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-tax-...
There's also a maximum of $25k/year (~$2k/mo).
> PSA: the "No Tax On Tips" provision expires...
My understanding is that this is true for all the Trump handouts: otherwise the ten-year economic outlooks would have cratered. The Economist had a couple of nice analyses on this.
Of course this means that the next administration will need to start with tax increases just to get to neutral, but maybe that is a feature?
The Republican strategy is to booby trap the US economy every time they are in power since Reagan.
> true for all the Trump handouts: otherwise the ten-year economic outlooks would have cratered
Not just that - they're often timed to expire early into the next administration which, if Democrats win, is an instant "look how the Democrats treat the working folk!" hammer. e.g. "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" from 2017, expiring at the end of 2025[0].
[0] https://theconversation.com/trumps-plans-to-extend-tax-cuts-...
Tax bills are universally passed through the budget reconciliation process these days to overcome the filibuster (can do a budget with only 51 Senate votes). That process has many restrictions on what tax changes can do to projected revenues outside a certain window: https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/tax/prospects-for-budget-r....
> My understanding is that this is true for all the Trump handouts
Only those for humans expire. The corporate tax cuts are forever. Read into that what you will.
> Of course this means that the next administration will need to start with tax increases just to get to neutral, but maybe that is a feature?
Oh no.
What you have missed is the incredible end run around the spirit of the reconciliation process that the Republicans did this time around.
So, the did these tricks with the tax in Trump's first term, with tax breaks set to sunset in order to have a revenue-neutral effect over the required ten years.
This time around they needed to extend those breaks, right? So they must had to cut spending or raise other taxes in order to do that and have a revenue-neutral effect, right?
Ha ha, no! They convinced the CBO that the baseline for the reconciliation process this time should be whatever was in effect for the last few years. So those breaks are already baked in and don't need to be counterbalanced. It's a two-step, long-term process for making things permanent through the reconciliation process that otherwise one could not.
Is that maximum $25k in tips, or in total income that includes tips?
Tips. The AGI phaseout starts at 150k (300 married).
300k before your tips start to become taxable??
What in the world is driving this very high ceiling?
Kids of rich people now can exploit this loophole. They can get up to 300k from some fake job and do not pay any taxes on the "tips" part of it. Each month the tips part is going, oh surprise, going to be the maximum allowed by law.
So they pay tax on 30k but none on the 2k per month. Not that big of a loophole.
More like on top of whatever “free money” they could have as “gifts,” they can now move an extra $2k/month as daddy’s tip.
Rich people are more likely to pay accountants to come up with complicated ways to exploit the tax system. If the top 5% had access to this loophole, you’d probably end up with some crazy outcome like 80% of money saved from this deduction goes to the top 5% of earners. And that would make the provision more expensive to include in tax legislation (trading off against other things like the headline tax rate). Since “no tax on tips” was a campaign promise, they probably wanted to keep the promise while setting limits to make it easier to fit into the rest of the bill.
300k isn’t what it used to be these days with inflation and cost of living. If you have kids and a house, things get expensive quickly.
Yes, it was Ferrari money and now it’s just Porsche money. Poor things.
This is the problem when talking about class warfare. We are eating our own. Someone making $300k a year is closer to the median than someone making $5 million a year. Losing ~30% of your spending power since 2008 might not matter if you're a billionaire but for most working professionals it has an impact.
Right on time for them to lose the next election so people blame Democrats.
It's all so cynical.
If Democrats win they could extend them
> If Democrats win they could extend them
And what happens to the debt/deficit then? You know, the thing that the GOP constantly complains about but always makes worse?
The GOP loves to cut revenues (taxes, especially for top percentiles):
If Democrats win the presidency, they would still probably need cooperation from Republicans to get an extension through Congress, which means that there are no good options for the Dems.
Yes but this policy is absolutely terrible, so it seems unlikely they would
"Would you like to leave a tip for your server?" "20%."
"And the cook?" "What?"
"The cook wants in on the no-tax-on-tips so we're asking how much you'd like to tip him. We're also going to ask for the cleaner and the guy who delivered the ingredients earlier this morning."
If you think this is absurd, this is how I feel, coming from a non-tipping country, when I read about the tipping culture in the US.
Yeah, it's optional but if you don't tip everybody loses their minds. I've experienced this once abroad, I was with a group of exchange students that didn't want to pay the tip because students are always broke, and the cashier was mad to the point of being aggressive.
In Brazil we have 10% tip which you can opt out, and we usually do it when there is a problem with the service, but I wouldn't think twice to ask for the tip to be excluded if I was undergoing financial hardships, and I'm sure nobody would bat an eye.
I think it's not just the tip culture that is toxic. I feel like the entire American culture is plagued by toxic masculinity, the gun culture and hyper individuality.
I don’t disagree with your diagnosis of American culture, but the tip thing is just shifting wages from employer to customer. It’s no different from VAT versus sales tax: same result, different math.
Opting not to tip when it is part of the economic transaction is no different from walking out with the silverware; not expressly forbidden, just a breach of social contract.
>It’s no different from VAT versus sales tax: same result, different math.
There's lots of evidence that tips vary significantly based on the traits of the customer (like the customer's self-esteem and sense of shame: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijchm-02...) and the employee asking for the tip (e.g. attractiveness and simple demographic characteristics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...).
> walking out with the silverware; not expressly forbidden
Isn't property theft very expressly forbidden?
It's absolutely different because a customer is not legally required to tip, and if a customer decides not to, that is directly impacting a worker's take-home pay.
And walking out with silverware is theft, I genuinely have no idea where you pulled that from as a similar example.
Then why call it a tip? It's just cynical then, which I don't know what's worse.
Plenty of customs don’t make logical sense, and plenty of words have dramatically changed meaning over time. Don’t read too much into the word. A “fine” used to mean a voluntary settlement.
You are right, I wasn't really thinking about how customs evolve organically. Outrage kinda blinded me because that experience was such a culture clash that clouded my understanding. Thanks. I mean, I still feel like using the word "tip" for something that is culturally not optional, even though you can opt out, is unnecessarily confusing and hostile, but that's what respecting foreign culture is all about.
> when it is part of the economic transaction
Well, shit, if I made it part of the economic transaction, you'd have a point. What you're saying is that the employers are not holding up their end of the transaction.
In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.
Let me put it another way for my foreign friends - if you are dining at a restaurant in America with table service, you need to consider (at least) a 15% tip as part of the base cost. If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.
Then why call it a tip? The cynicism is just unbearable. If it's a tip people are going to have the option of opting out, disregarding any unwritten social norm that contradicts the actual word used.
Why then 15%? Why not $10 per hour of service for all tables assigned to the waiter?
Why chef who is actually prepping your dish got fixed rate but pretty girl should get percentage of the total bill?
If I order a $100 bottle of wine, should I add $10 for the delivery from wine room? And extra 5$ for the opening? And $5 for refill?
Because what was once an active decision became a default, what was a default became an expectation, what was an expectation became an effective-requirement.
And lo, norms are made, the ratchet turns, culture solidifies, a new line written to the social contract. And tip-dependent workers have non-optional tipping.
If you really want a logic to follow strictly — any worker class whose wages are depressed by expected tipping should be tipped
> In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.
This actually varies state by state. In Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington the minimum wage does not change tipped vs non-tipped. Also in other states if the pay after tips do not meet the state minimum wage the employer is required to make up this difference.
If you actually look at the data tipped employees make significantly more vs median income in countries with tipping than without.
> If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.
I think this works if we're talking about a full restaurant, If we're talking about a mostly empty restaurant then even a 5% tip is money that the server would have not otherwise had, pretty certain they'd choose more money over less.
> So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.
Actually, if tips don't bring tipped minimum wage to minimum wage, employers are required to increase pay to minimum wage.
While this is true, good luck asking for it.
^This is how it is in practice
You would rather be let go for performance reasons rather than they will pay you difference in 5$
employment lawyers love when managers refuse to honor their payment obligations. Treble damages.
My understanding is if an employee who gets paid largely in tips isnt making more than min wage, that employee is almost always let go or quits. Employment layers dont love trying to prove a case that is pretty unlikely to be provable.
They can always find a reason, such as "so and so customer complained about your level of service and I can't have any complaints as a business owner" which on its face is a legitimate reason to fire someone.
This comment is very disconnected from the reality of service industry wage theft. Employment lawyers rarely bother with a case where the potential payout is a few thousand dollars.
In theory the federal or state department of labor could do something without the worker needing a lawyer. The federal DoL is useless in such cases and most state DoLs don't seem to do much either.
I don't understand how it's the customer's fault if managers are blatantly stealing wages. That sounds like someone else's problem to solve. If servers make it public, I'll stop going to that place, but preemptively tipping to avoid illegal labor practices feels like a bad solution.
I love that we're just like "so FYI we decided this particular class of worker is okay to pay less than a living wage but to compensate if they do really good at their job, we're going to make it a social norm that people pay more than their bill costs and they keep the difference."
Wouldn't it make far more sense to just pay them a living wage and charge what that costs and be done? It's genuinely the only part of eating out that annoys me is it ends with a math quiz.
It this lower wage true for states like California?
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped 16.50 in California, 20 for fast food workers
as the other commenters didn't answer the question:
No, it is not true for California
> you need to consider (at least) a 15% tip as part of the base cost
No, I don't need to do anything. Restaurants are free to charge a service fee and state that plainly on the menu, as many already do. Otherwise it's optional and I will treat it as such.
Nah. 10% is standard, 15% is they did something good besides what's expected, 20% is amazing.
But I personally have chosen a different option because it's just exploitive all the way around. The business trying to exploit it's employees, the employees exploiting customers (10% being pushed up to 15%).
I would not be surprised if those poor waiters make more money than their customers.
Americans pride themselves on their rugged individuality but deep down it is all very collectivist.
Explain to me how a society with minimal well care, where people would rather die of a heart attack than get taken to a hospital, where you need to save your entire life to afford a mediocre education for your children... How is that a collectivist society?
The toxic tipping culture is spilling abroad too.
Several restaurant owners are advocating in Italy to make 20% tips mandatory so they can reduce their costs.
It's not "spilling abroad". Italy had tips built into their bills when I went there over 20 years ago.
In Italy tips are never required as are a part of what you pay for. You leave a tip for outstanding service if you want, but it’s neither mandated nor customary.
No one's saying they're required. When you say it's not customary, how do you reconcile that with it being printed as part of the bill?
If it is printed on the bill it is not a tip. You must be talking about "coperto", i.e. servics costs. This money does goes to the waiter.
Nonsense.
What you're referring to as "tip", is the coperto. It's a minimal, fixed, optional fee that includes service, bread and table setting.
Not every place makes you pay it, it's more common in more expensive restaurants, but still, it ranges from 0 to an average 2 euros per person.
Comparing it to %-based mandatory tips in US is nonsense.
Tipping has a powerful advantage: it aligns the incentives of customers and servers almost perfectly. Because tips aren’t capped, waiters are motivated to go above and beyond to satisfy each guest. Without tipping, the server’s motivation often drops to providing only adequate service—more in line with the restaurant’s interests than with each individual diner’s needs.
You can see this difference in customer experience worldwide. Nowhere delivers consistently attentive service quite like the US. By contrast, many European countries, especially those where tipping is uncommon (such as the Netherlands), often provide service that feels efficient but impersonal.
That might make sense... until they ask you to tip before you receive the service! When I order a coffee at a small shop, and the card terminal asks me to select a tip (displaying the default choice of 20% centered and in bold), how am I supposed to know whether the coffee will be good or not? As a regular customer, sure, you'll have an idea of what the general level of service at this place is like. But the expectation these days is to always tip, even if I've never been there before and I have no way of accurately judging the quality.
I never tip before receiving the service. Always hit zero. It feels a bit weird to begin with but you get used to it and i've not been treated any differently. A tip is generally not required for coffee or to-go/counter service.
That's anectdotal. There is literally zero alignment or correlation between tipping and good service.
You want to have a stress free experience the waiters tries to upsell you at every corner.
If you mistake upselling for attention then you're part of the tipping complex already.
Good service comes from good training and experience not the assumed money left over in your wallet. That's the businesses goal of not leaving any money on the table. So the alignment is between the business owner and the employee if anything, not between employee and customer.
I would make an exception for bars, but that's about it.
>That's anectdotal. There is literally zero alignment or correlation between tipping and good service.
The correlation is simple. The better the perceived service from the customer, the bigger the tip is.
>You want to have a stress free experience the waiters tries to upsell you at every corner.
In the vast majority of restaurants the server has little interest in upselling you. The exception is, perhaps, at a place with an expensive wine list (and regardless of tipping, businesses will be looking to upsell that wine list).
>Good service comes from good training and experience not the assumed money left over in your wallet.
Speaking as someone with industry experience, this is honestly just funny to read.
Training? For a server? Lol!
These are by and large scrappy people (and I say this lovingly). Lots of cursing, dubious substances, people working hella long hours in other jobs, people who are just planning on working for a few weeks and then leaving, etc. Yet when a big table comes in, they button up and act perfectly, despite cursing about the customers in the back, and the incentive is not "up selling" (servers care about seat count and nothing else - that's how the hierarchy of the seating pecking order is structured) it's about tip money.
Good service doesn't come from experience either. The newest servers will basically give the best service (they're nice to everyone), while often the most experienced servers are the most jaded and cranky. It's a rough job to be part of long term and it breaks you down a bit.
Also, regulars who tip well are truly appreciated by the service staff, and the staff really does go out of their way to make sure they get good service. This is because of the steady, predictable income stream. I don't know what to tell you other than, yes, the tip money absolutely does play a large part in the customer experience, and there is a correlation.
> Nowhere delivers consistently attentive service quite like the US.
I have found this to be true in pretty much all interactions (on average), regardless of whether the person is on a tipped wage.
Americans value salesmanship and customer service in ways that few other countries I've been to do. They market better, they sell better, they make customers feel better, in pretty much all types of businesses.
Source: someone who's lived in three major US metropolitan areas, and two in the EU.
Personally, I could do without hyper-attentive wait staff.
Dining out in Italy is phenomenal for many reasons, a laid back serving culture is just one of them.
As a Dutch person I despise fake smiles and servile attitude.Especially when it is bought with money.
In US I got exaggerated smiles with *winks* from waitresses. No, they were not genuinely flirting with me.
> Because tips aren’t capped, waiters are motivated to go above and beyond to satisfy each guest. Without tipping, the server’s motivation often drops to providing only adequate service—more in line with the restaurant’s interests than with each individual diner’s needs.
Do people tip their accountants? Their nurses and doctors? Their dentist? Their mechanic? The cashier at the grocery store? The clerk at the shoe store who fetches the shoe in the size/colour I want?
Perhaps people should just do their jobs properly because that is what they're paid to do. And if they're not doing their jobs such that the restaurant/business suffers in its reputable they get fired and replaced by someone who will. (Kind of like how I have to do the job I'm paid to in IT or the company will act accordingly if I do not.)
No, but if you gave these people extra $ to pay attention to you - on average, they would.
Before my Lyft trip to the airport I got a notification from the app: “Add a tip before your ride.
Make your driver’s day, they’ll see your tip before they accept your ride”
It's getting harder to get the drivers to accept rides in some situations. Recently, I watched some Uber driver accept my ride and then drag their heels to pick me up in the hope that I would cancel. They didn't like my destination.
This reminds me of the old Soviet union where the rates were fixed by some central committee. In order to get a cab to pick you up, you would hold up fingers that represented how much extra you would tip. The more fingers, the more likely the drivers would actually stop.
Does Japan have a strong tipping culture ?
If you consider strong tipping culture to mean "severely insulted", then yes!
Good to know.
But why exactly ?
I believe it's because tipping implies they need a money incentive to do a good job. Essentially insulting their professionalism.
What you’re describing is how it _should_ work. Instead every server feels entitled to 20% regardless of how bad their service is and it is frequently atrocious.
Besides, I’d rather have efficient and impersonal than (at best) fake nice.
Living in rural Spain service is chill. Am used to it by now. Went to an upmarket restaurant in France other day and it took me ages to realise the waiter was vibing me the whole meal for a tip. Such a weird transactional space. Person literally smiling and being agreeable for money. Insane.
>Person literally smiling and being agreeable for money. Insane.
And you think other hourly service workers aren't being that way to some degree? Lol.
> And you think other hourly service workers aren't being that way to some degree? Lol.
Like plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters/framers?
> Nowhere delivers consistently attentive service quite like the US.
This paragraph reads like it was written by someone who’s never been to planet earth but has diligently read documentation on how it works.
FWIW, it matches my experience in the three countries I've lived in and the dozen others I've traveled to.
Or it just matches your own cultural preference.
I personally _hate_ American service with passion.
I prefer to be left alone most of the time in restaurants or not being talked to like the best friend I haven’t seen from the high school.
I also have an expectation that the waiter is not in a desperate position to rely on a tip for their living and is fairly compensated by their base salary.
No, it matches my experience.
My preference isn't necessarily for American-style service, that's just an assumption you'd be making with zero information.
To be fair, tipping the cook makes more sense to me than the waiter. I come to a restaurant for the food, I don't particularly care about the service beyond a certain baseline. It never makes sense to me that waiters can earn more with tips than kitchen staff.
Yes it seems totally arbitrary. When I first visited the US I paid for our group, and didn't tip the waiter because he got our order wrong, and was met with aghast faces. I didn't realise you're supposed to tip EVEN when the service is bad!
The employer is shifting the responsibility of wages to the customer (you). It is customary in business to pay a wage even if an employee makes a mistake. The tipout structure of most restaurants, where the server tips out the kitchen and support staff, also collects a percentage of all *sales* from the server's tips, so not tipping results in a server paying your tipout from their tips just for the privilege of serving you, hence the agast faces.
Tipping should be illegal to substitute for pay. Majority-tipped restaurants are almost always predatory and take advantage of both customers and employees in order to further enrich the owners.
«Tip-pooling» is common many places. This implies that tips is shared between employees, for example including the kitchen staff.
I don't think that's true in the vast majority of establishments? Tip pooling usually means that the front of the house staff pool their tips. Not that they share with the entire restaurant.
Yeah, I don't know anything about the majority of establishments.
My single reference is the Norwegian upscale restaurant Theatercafeen, which introduced tip pooling across waiters and kitchen. It was highly contentious when introduced by the restaurant: The waiters took the case to the courts, and it went all the way to the supreme court of Norway [1], where it was decided that the employer could decide rules for tip-sharing.
[1]: https://www.arbeidsrettsadvokater.no/domstolsnytt/dom-deling...
That’s a very engineering viewpoint. But much of the world values the whole package, including clean and neatly set tables and place settings, advice on the menu, timing of courses, QA of prep and fixing issues without customer intervention, help with any mishaps like spilled drinks or dropped silverware, boxing of food to go, etc.
A utilitarian only interested in pure food quality is much better off cooking at home. You can do better at a quarter the price.
Food/software is only about 25% of the cost and value in these businesses, though perceptions on value differ of course.
In the US, the cook and busboys and other support staff normally also receive tips as part of the "tipping out" system where the servers split part of their tips. It is voluntary but not really - if you, as a server, don't tip out your tables start not getting their food as fast and the table isn't turned as fast.
I have a question for the American's in the audience here.
There's always this narrative about tipping allowing for exceptional service and I wanted to know what meta advantages or options have you been given or seen as a result of this?
I'm reminded by Charlie Sheen's character in two and a half men consistently tipping the pizza delivery driver who brings him a champagne bottle with his pizza.
As a comparison elsewhere, I've had French wait staff bring me bread at the table whenever I visit Paris and even if the restaurant is out they source it from nearby restaurants unprompted with no expectation of a tip even though I would perceive that as being above and beyond service.
I'm trying to understand if we're all on the same page about great and even exceptional service :)
As an European (Romanian, more precisely) who has visited the USA, I would say that servers there were much more patient and attentive than servers I'm used to both from my own country, and from various European vacations. I still remember a young waitress who repeated all of the options on the menu literally 5 times going around a table of 15 people.
However, I'm not at all convinced this is as tied to tipping as people claim. My own country has a very clear and old tipping culture (though 10% is the more common "target" tip for food service), and yet service here is often terrible, with bored and annoyed waiters. I think it's much more of a cultural norm than any kind of strong economic incentives.
I find the main difference between the US and Europe to be cluelessness and very different views about what good service might look like. My conclusion is that good service comes from management valuing good service and training (or firing) their staff accordingly.
The most common difference: restaurant wait staff aggressively removing plates as soon as or before you are done with them. While in Europe that obviously would be rushed and seen as overly aggressive and a hint that it's time to get the hell out to make space for other dinners. Super rude in Europe, considered attentive service in the US.
Striking experience: At an allegedly "five star" resort in the US, some wait staff being very loud and chummy with the guests to the point of disturbing the guests, and other guests, and neglecting other tables! Inconceivable in Europe - reserved for top management or owners. And failures to pay attention left and right - by all the staff everywhere. Clearly blameable on management defining the wrong parameters as objectives to their staff.
Tipping in the US is entirely hit or miss: some staff will remember past tipping, but only some. Some staff make a visible effort at service (before tipping), but only some. Etc.
But to be fair, there was a time when service in Paris got so bad and rude that the waiters corporation ran ad campaigns asking them to cut it out and do better. French service still has a bad reputation (of rudeness and scams). And there, it's very much NOT that waiters don't know what to do and not do. They know.
I would see working out "out of bread" with the neighbors as normal when the restaurant is not super busy, and "above and beyond" at rush hours. But then in France, running out of bread before very late in rush hours would be a clear management failure.
Ironically, as an American the only time in my life when I had a waiter effectively ask us (a couple) to hurry up so other diners could sit, was at a Michelin starred restaurant in Naples, Italy. We hadn't even been there an hour, weren't even done eating yet. Perplexes me to this day.
I'm not a fan of tipping in general, but as an American who has spent a lot of time in Europe, my experience is that the level of service in American restaurants is quite a bit higher than in European ones on average. That's not to say that in Europe it's bad service per se, and in certain ways I actually prefer it in Europe where the server isn't constantly "checking in" on me while I'm trying to have dinner.
I can't speak for the rest of Europe but, as a Brit, I find this kind of overbearing and inauthentic type of service somewhere between cringe and outright annoying. Especially when it's accompanied by a lack of competency, for example missing items or not doing what they said they'd do.
A lot of people feel this way, but as someone with experience here, it's also not just about trying to be overbearing.
Remember, servers are dealing with the average American. A decent portion of the people that come in are extremely demanding. /Three rounds of sauce on the side in different configurations... Can I have the sauce from that dish on the other table on the side of my dish? Oh it's part of the cooking process? Can you ask the chef if he can put it in a little ramekin? Oh it's a sickly sweet glaze that needs to be cooked? I think I'll try a little bit of it anyway. Ewww this is disgusting take this back!
Dealing with this day in and day out will default you to that service state after a while, especially because the "average working class Americans" often tip the best.
Every server knows screwing up the actual food nukes their tip (and it often does). If they're working in that context and still messing that up, well, they probably can't be helped.
> That's not to say that in Europe it's bad service per se, and in certain ways I actually prefer it in Europe where the server isn't constantly "checking in" on me while I'm trying to have dinner.
I want them to check in to ensure that the order was (a) correct, and (b) properly cooked.
There may be instances in which you drop some cutlery or need an extra napkin, and a quick check-in could be useful. You could also flag them down with a raised hand or eye contact. A busser could achieve the same results too (also refilling water glasses).
I wanted to know what meta advantages or options have you been given or seen as a result of this?
None for me.
I honestly think it leads to much worse service. The waiters end up calculating every action they make to a money value, leading to every interaction feeling transactional. Creeps me out.
I don't like the idea of even more expectations for tips, since we're already tip-fatigued. Despite that, I'd rather have less rules and taxes and have them actually enforced than have a situation where people pocket the cash portion of their tips untaxed anyway, which only punishes honest people.
It's pernicious. I've been to places that add "service charge" by default now to relieve tipping, then still give you the option to tip on top of that, which some people do because they think maybe the service charge isn't going to the server (in the places I've been to, it is). Tipping needs to die and it's frustrating to see it starting to proliferate in some European countries.
Just hit the zero tip option and move on with life. If a seller can’t advertise the price sufficient to sustain their business, that is their problem.
With a small amount of sadness, this is the conclusion I'm starting to end up with. Yes I think waitresses and service workers should make more money. But tipping in the US has become opaque, expanding everywhere, and the expectations around tipping seem to be getting ratcheted up constantly. A business is not viable if customers have to pay your employees separately. I'm close to hitting the nuclear button and just defaulting to zero.
My bright line rule is that I won't tip before service is rendered. If I'm asked before, I can't judge the service, and therefore making a tip decision is impossible.
In Japan, the service is amazing, and you don't tip.
If you leave money on the table, the server will chase you down, to give it back.
In the US, you get shit service, and they give you the stinkeye, if you don't tip at least 20%.
Happened to me once in Thailand, I was very surprised.
Truly USA is an overpriced country with the only good thing being that jobs are high paying… and that’s it.
I think the best thing in life is to have a remote job somehow + travel 50% of the time + stay w friends and family 50% of the time
> USA is an overpriced country
The USA is ranked sixth in purchasing power in the world, meaning we are definitionally underpriced.
The countries that have even more purchasing power are: Norway, Macau, Bermuda, Singapore, and Luxembourg.
Let's see... two tiny countries that specialize in finance, a city-state that is the historic trade hub for the region, another that is the historic gambling hub for the region, and a low-population country that won the oil lottery and has been smart enough not to let its residents get high on their own supply, thus avoiding the worst of "the resource curse."
Idk, as an European, coming to US 20/10 years ago was cheaper than traveling Europe.
Today? You're easily paying 3/400$ per night in Manhattan and other cities. Same is true for dining, museums, transport.
Everything is insanely expensive compared to what it was just few years ago.
Services are even more expensive.
I was in Japan last month, tipped 4 times, once it ended up awkward with the waiter insisting me to take it back, the other 3 times they accepted it gladly and thanked.
Why would you want to spread tipping culture?
Yes this is so cringe, but it makes me kind of laugh. Of all the things the Western world historically imposed on Asia, it makes me laugh this is what made me feel is most cringeworthy as of recent.
Please keep your tip customs out of our culture. Next time just say thank you several times to show you appreciate them.
I don't tip for the sake of tipping, I do it when I receive a more than excellent job.
Times are a changin’…
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are being instructed to accept tips, in order to keep the customer happy.
I think culture is changing and the waiters are increasingly immigrants.
I don't know if that's true for Japan. The only non-Japanese folks I knew, over there, were Chinese, and they weren't exactly the types of folks that waited tables.
In recent years Japan's immigrant population increased by 500 to 1000 people *every single day*.
Many of them end up in hospitality, especially in touristic places, due to different reasons, but very importantly, immigrants from south Asia generally speak English fluently, something Japanese people rarely do.
I've seen plenty of "japanese" restaurants in Shinjuku where not a single member of the staff was japanese.
Another place where you're gonna see plenty of immigrants are all convenience stores.
> I've been to places that add "service charge" by default now to relieve tipping, then still give you the option to tip on top of that, which some people do because they think maybe the service charge isn't going to the server
This may be the case some of the time, but from what I’ve seen and heard…
During COVID, everyone put out the tip jar. It turns out that some folks are willing to give in spots that are not “traditional” tipping situations.
Some folks just have extra money, and they are happy to share their wealth with others. This is doubly true in hard times.
Tips are one way to do that, and some folks do that with extra generosity.
I will also add that people seem to be more than happy to tip/give extremely generously to folks who “make their day”. Maybe it’s a great ride share driver, or a great massage therapist, or an online streamer, or whatever. Some people seem to be more than willing to tip folks who bring them joy.
All that said, if that’s not your style, just click skip and move on. Most people understand and won’t judge.
There are a handful of entitled people who will try to guilt people into typing in non-traditional tipping spots. Just don’t go back to those places if at all possible — those people suck.
The most frustrating thing has been the tip prompt that happens before service has been rendered. A tip is based on service. If you haven't received the service yet, the fuck is the tip meant to reflect? That you succeeded at breathing?
Why should we bother lying? It is just a bribe, to hopefully get better service.
I have a diametrically opposed take. I prefer tipping before.
It's my way of giving someone a little appreciation because they're (typically) doing a job I wouldn't want to do myself.
It's got virtually nothing to do with the quality of service I get. I always tip the same amount even when service is bad. There have only been maybe 3 exceptions in my nearly 3 decades of adult life.
I'm fortunate to be able to afford a little bit of generosity for service people, so I do it.
Edit: I should add that, in places where there's a customary tipping practice (eg: US restaurants), I tip above the customary amount no questions asked. The "generosity" is the amount above customary.
The problem stems less from how it might have originated and more from what it results in.
Multiple times I've been travelling for dinner with coworkers and someone notes "oh, tip is already included here" (be it the group size, the way the place works normally, or whatever reason) and then half the table starts redoing the receipt because they were tricked into it. This example highlights it's not always about intent, work already has a set policy of how to tip (i.e. no generosity or etc involved), people are just getting plain tricked into doing something else instead. Regardless - it's successful in the growth of tips, so it spreads.
Similarly, "just click skip and move on" puts the friction in the wrong direction - especially if you're not alone. It's great that it can apply a lot of the time, but the problem is it has friction, sometimes strong, in certain scenarios - again, this friction is only weighted towards the growth of tips.
Lastly, the vast majority of people have some level of desire to be fair, even if they don't want to be generous. Any uncertainty which can be created in the tipping process ("am I supposed to tip here?", "is the tip in the service charge, if so how much goes to the person/how much were they expecting to get in total?", "is the recommended tip on the receipt more than I expected", and so on) tends to push people to tip more than their generosity alone would have inclined, and it's really quite unfair to say the solution is to just click skip and hope all will understand each time.
Unfortunately, there is pretty much nothing pushing in the opposite direction. Your options as an individual, or even sizable portion of society, are to shit on the wait staff's income about it in hopes they complain enough that management gives them a better salary (that'd take quite the movement). Everything about this side has the exact opposite incentive pressures as the above, and so whether particularly generous folks are a factor or not... there's really nothing that's going to get done about it for the typical person.
Maybe we can start some place in the middle of "being able to walk into a place and understand what the cost will be up front", such as including tax in the base prices of things, and it'll open more doors about tipping for the same consideration. Until then, we all are stuck with dealing with it.
"Your options as an individual, or even sizable portion of society, are to shit on the wait staff's income"
My primarily option is to multiply the estimated cost of going to the restaurant by 1.3 (tip+tax) and make my decision about going there based on that figure, not on published menu prices.
That's a good estimate for an individual visit as of today but is precisely the kind of thing that which has resulted in "normal" tips going from +.1 to +.15 to +.2 as the years go on (erring too low has more friction than erring too high, and if something else raises the amount traditionally tipped somewhere then "normal" for this will tend to adjust upwards in a large group).
Will owners realize at some point that the tips are really coming out of their pockets? If a guest has to pay $10 tip, she will buy $10 less food.
The staff wages (what tips offset) come out of their pocket either way, advertising the lower price is just a marketing technique.
Yeah, this is going to incentivize businesses to try and make as much of their employees' pay come from tips, which means consumers will be expected to pay more tips, which is the opposite direction I want it to go.
> since we're already tip-fatigued
Bluetti hit the "are you actually fucking serious?" level for me with the tips. They ask you for a % tip when you order online from them. No employee contact, no consultation. I just added a $2k item to the basket, tried to pay and got an invitation to tip extra.
I guess the good news is now we can ask the server their marginal tax rate and reduce our tips accordingly
I do like the idea of people doing stuff for free for the public benefit and asking quietly for tips on topic with the article re: "digital creators".
I think one aspect that is understated: "No Tax on Tips" is only a deduction for the purposes of federal income tax. W-2 workers still owe FICA and other payroll taxes on such income, and similarly self-employed workers would still owe self-employment tax.
To me, a more appropriate name is "Some taxes on tips".
And most of their tax is already at the state level or FICA, so it's more like, "most taxes on tips, unless you make decent money, then you bet a break."
But that's not winning an election.
$1 subscription, but "This content is only available for my top 1,000,000 fans" ranked by tips.
Oooh, I like this. Reminds me of charity auctions.
I like the idea. How to implement in transparently in away you aren't always the 1,000,001 one?
I’m more concerned with no tip on taxes. Sales tax is usually in the subtotal that tip percentage are calculated on. Most POS I’ve seen do this way
Before someone is confused: POS here means “Point of Sale”, not “Piece of …”.
"No Tax On Tips" is so stupidly regressive and yet another addition to the complex tax law. Somehow we decided a waiter making 100k with tips needs more help than a stock worker at Walmart.
It isn't "no tax on tips" that's regressive, it's tips themselves. If tips are a gift, then they should be taxed as gifts are taxed. End tips and raise wages, and the taxes cease to be confusing or controversial.
For example, half of parents are transferring an average of $1,500/month, tax-free, to their adult children.* Why do they get to do this?
Or to take it to absurdity, why aren't my donations to charities taxed? What's the reason for the carveout? Should I instead donate earmarked cash to a charity that provides assistance to underpaid waitstaff?
[*] If you didn't hear that the other half are getting this, now you know: https://www.savings.com/insights/financial-support-for-adult...
For example, half of parents are transferring an average of $1,500/month, tax-free, to their adult children. Why do they get to do this?
For the same reason we have a generous gift tax exemption applicable to any gift from anyone to anyone: If you’re not receiving something of monetary value in return, what you’re providing isn’t “income” in the sense Congress has built income tax policy to capture.
That isn’t the case with tips for waitstaff.
Well, this year I suppose it will be $1,583.33. That's just the gift tax exclusion ($19k this year) at work. I don't really see a problem with it. People should be able to give money to family members without penalty.
> End tips and raise wages, and the taxes cease to be confusing or controversial.
Some businesses have tried this, but often it doesn't work out. To make this financially feasible, it would require action at the federal and state levels to 1) eliminate different tipped vs. regular tax rates (some places have done this already), 2) and modify how payroll taxes work to even things out a bit. It sounds like "oh, no problem we'll just raise prices by 20% to cover the extra salaries". But no, that doesn't work, because businesses and individuals are responsible for payroll tax on non-tipped salaries.
And there's a collective action problem at play: take two identical restaurants. One follows the now-standard model of accepting tips, and ~20% is customary. Their identical competitor won't accept tips, pays their staff better, and charges 20% more for their food. Fun outcome: people get sticker shock at the second place and go to the first place instead, even though in the end they pay exactly the same amount. Human psychology is dumb, and restaurants know this, so they won't do this unless all their competitors are also required to do it. (This is also why in the US prices are advertised tax-excluded; pricing that includes tax is viewed as more expensive, even if the final charge is the same.)
That survey is stupid in this context, as it include everyone 18+ as an ‘adult child’, which includes a lot of college students. There’s nothing malicious about supporting your kid in college, nor would it make any sense to tax that.
Nothing wrong with giving money to your kids in general. That income has already been taxed. If they were paying the kids for pretend work and taking a deduction for the higher-income parents, that'd be different.
> As you might expect, Generation Z adults (ages 18-28) receive more financial support from their parents than their Millennial counterparts (ages 29-44),
I mean, yeah, something like a third the former are college students! What a trash fire of an article.
"no tax on tips" was a pandering move to the mostly financially-illiterate populace that still don't understand progressive tax systems. Singling out certain types of income makes no sense and is very unfair. I wouldn't be surprised if this actually ends up resulting in less tip income over the long term due to people going "wait my income is taxed but theirs isn't, why should I tip as much?"
Don't worry, no tax on tips actually phases out relatively quickly (2028) while the tax cuts enacted for the 1% are there to stay.
edit: fixed year typo
Non-tip workers won't remember (or even notice) the phase-out. The damage is done and I agree it will incentivise people to tip less even after the phase-out.
Extending the 2017 tax policies, specifically continuing the capping of SALT deductions, leads to higher taxes for high income earners. That deduction was worth $100K to a $1M/year income in a 10% State income tax state earner. Even more when you add in property taxes.
If they had not been extended the taxes for those high earners would have dropped for 2025 and beyond.
The bottom 50% pay no taxes and the top 1% still pay 40+% of federal taxes.
> the top 1% still pay 40+% of federal taxes
No. They pay 40% of Federal income tax, specifically.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1...
> The bottom 50% pay no taxes
Same mistake here. They pay plenty of payroll etc. tax.
The numbers from your link are:
The top 1% pays 24% of Federal taxes, and the bottom 50% pays somewhere between 7% (bottom 40%) and 16% (bottom 60%).
Yes, that sounds about correct. It's a lot more than "bottom 50% pay no tax".
Also I'm unclear if that source includes only the "employee half" of the 15% FICA.
That’s a crystal clear sign that the top 1% have way too much money.
Yeah this argument is so silly: "the top 1% pay 60% of income tax" oh okay, so as they get closer and closer to escape velocity from the rest of us, that number will climb to 1% paying 70%, then 80%, then 90%, so your argument to tax them gets weaker while the functional need to tax them gets stronger.
Brilliant!
no, employees do not pay payroll tax, employers do.
I assure you we do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contribution...
> The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA /ˈfaɪkə/) is a United States federal payroll (or employment) tax payable by both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare—federal programs that provide benefits for retirees, people with disabilities, and children of deceased workers.
7.65% of your check until you hit the cap. Employer pays a similar amount.
Additionally, removing the cap on FICA contributions would likely push Social Security back into long-term solvency, but that would be far too much of a burden on the top 1% of wage earners so it’ll never happen.
To be precise, social security maxes out at around the income of the 93 percentile of income
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
But that would also mean uncapping the maximum amount you are eligible for for social security.
It wouldn’t _have_ to, that’s a political decision not a mathematical requirement.
But, even if you did it would still help tremendously and possibly still be sufficient. There’s diminishing returns where lower income people get a higher percentage of their income as a social security benefit. As long as that policy is maintained the ultra high wage earners would be contributing far in excess of the benefit they get paid back out