Tips are bullshit and workers should be required to paid a living wage.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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and now the employee's are going to be asking for more tips instead of wage, so they pay less tax.
You think everyone one asking for a tip at the cashier is bad now?
Wait till they put this in.
You think everyone one asking for a tip at the cashier is bad now?
Yeah, this will just make it even more prevalent for sure.
I think the proliferation of tips at almost every register instead of being limited to full service has been bad since the trend started.
In my state restaurants pay the federal tipped minimum of just over 2 dollars an hour. Their entire income is based on tips, and until they are required to be paid a living wage, tips are a necessary evil. I tip them well because I know they are getting screwed on their paychecks more than any other job.
Keep in mind that cash tips tend to not be taxed, which means less going into social security, medicare/medicaid, and other government services. It is still income! But when it was mostly cash it was effectively tax free.
Now that cards are prevalent it is getting taxed, and this 'no tax on tips' bullshit instead of requiring a living wage just benefits business. It is a counterproductive 'fix' and fuck tipping culture altogether.
You know what the worst outcome of non-taxed tips will be? The fucking wealthy tipping each other tax free to move money around. That is what it will end up being in a couple decades because that is consistent with every other similar 'fix' that just avoids requiring a living wage.
Where I'm at it's automatics, for restaurant jobs 10% of the bill is calculated as additional income for the employee who's got their name on the receipt, if they want to add more to their taxes it's up to them but otherwise income is income is income and people need to pay taxes on theirs.
In Oregon, even tipped workers make the state minimum wage, but what that wage is varies depending on location.
Portland metro has the highest, it just went up on 7/1 to $15.95.
Other population centers like Salem, Eugene, Roseburg, Bend, Medford, and tourist spots on the coast have a lower rate of $14.70.
The rural areas where there are more meth labs and cows than people are at $13.70.
Map:
Good for Oregon. Until a living wage is implemented nationwide it is a problem that needs to be addressed.
You call that a living wage? In Washington the minimum is $16.28 statewide, including tipped labor, and it's $19.97 in Seattle.
What's wild to me is that the cost of a meal is the same as in places like Pennsylvania where a waiter can be paid as little as $2.83/hr.
Almost like the cost is set by the market, and the owners will cut wages as low as they're allowed to simply to take more for themselves.
You call that a living wage?
No. Good for them having servers paid more than the $2 and change national minimum wage.
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I'd rather not further cement tips as a fundamental part of our economic system. It's gotten so stupid to the point where you get asked for a tip before any service has even occurred and then the "service" is often just counter service which used to not be tipped. By not taxing this income, you're encouraging more income to be paid through tips to avoid taxes. When you're making all these little exemptions and special cases, maybe it's time to rethink the fundamental system so that it works better as a base case rather than having all these poorly-applied bandaids.
Anything to not pay people a living wage.
This will be the gateway to removing tipped minimum wage and eventually minimum wage. People often forget it is not just the employee that pays taxes on tips, but also the employer. This will also hurt an already struggling SSI system. I'd really like to see a detailed breakdown of a 10 year outlook on this plan.
How about you do something so people aren't reliant on tips in the first place?
Progress takes time. Overton window and shit like that. Babysteps. Slow, but steady.
This isn't progress. It is actively incentiving having compensation be tips in the tax code.
Yeah, it really seems like it will compound the issue.
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Maybe we should talk about the history behind taxing tips...and Social Security checks. Hint: it was Ronald Reagan and he raised them to pay for cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations
Thank you! I did not know that.
It always comes back to Reagan. This is what happens when you elect an actor celebrity with fucking active dementia to office. He becomes a useful tool to enact policy that the general public does not benefit from because he can remember the lines and deliver it in a package that they are willing to swallow.
Let's not do it again.
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This is utter nonsense. Outlaw tips and make them subject to normal minimum wage.
Why not abolish the tip system and require easier gets real pay instead?
i agree with you. interestingly however, my tip worker friends do not like this idea
Your tip worker friends have been tricked into thinking that a consistent living wage would be less money.
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Only because wages across the board are in the dumpster. If the kitchen guys were making $30/hr instead of $10/he they'd be complaining the other way
Looks like many haven't read the article before commenting. While both candidates have a proposal about the same topic, the methodology of implementing this seems to differ greatly.
The reaction in the comments appears to reflect more of the potential outcome of the Trump plan, though the Trump plan seems to mainly be some cobbled together bits of some other Republican proposals.
From the article, the Harris plan goes along with a minimum wage increase and an income cap so higher wage workers can't collect tax free "tips" in lieu of taxable income.
I also looked up some implications of elimination of taxed tips and found this article that goes into some numbers and shows how raising the standard deduction to make more workers, not just tipped workers, exempt from income tax and benefit many more people. I thought that was interesting and provided more seemingly useful info than either candidates' campaign promises.
The solution would be to increase the lowest tax bracket then.
That's another fine suggestion.
The numbers didn't really look in line for today's incomes, and from what I can tell from this, tax brackets for anything but the highest earners haven't changed other than an inflation adjustment since the 80s.
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This doesn’t sound like a good idea at all. If a person relies on tips for a livable wage, it should be taxed. If you work for tips, it’s taxable income.
No one should be working for tips as their primary income anyway. Pay people a living wage.
I intentionally go to support restaurants where I know they pay their employees a living wage.
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This sounds like a reason for companies to rely even more on tipping to compensate their workers... How about instead we make the companies pay the taxes on worker income earned through tipping? Then we can finally do away this ludicrous system we're all pressured to abide by.
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I'd rather we focus on paying people appropriately and getting rid of tips
Wait... Why wouldn't tipped employees pay taxes on that part of their income? Or am I not understanding what they mean?
I worked for tip for over a decade and to me it's perfectly normal that I would pay taxes on my earnings, especially when I had colleagues that didn't work for tip with about the same total income and taxes would be taken from their paycheque automatically, why would I not pay taxes on half my income if they had to?
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If this was a "Trump idea", why didn't he do it while president?
He got paid 40$ and a meal at McDonald's
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Cool. Now let service workers get paid a living wage. Then set the minimum wage to a calculated value based on the rate of inflation and regional cost of living, instead of the idiotic fixed value system. $15/hr is at least 10 years too late.
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That's nice. But she needs to get on with raising the minimum wage to a living wage and pegging it to inflation/COL.
Anything except exactly that is a waste of time and resources. A PR stunt.
Big difference is she is likely serious. Im not sure how I feel. These are not the highest paid things but I hate encouraging tips over regular reliable pay.
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Good. Taxing tips is bullshit. Even 45 can be accidentally right once in a while. Do Tax on Wall Street Speculation instead.
Why is it bullshit? Just because your income comes from clients instead of your boss doesn't mean it's not income.
Hell, the US became the US because of the "no taxation without representation" thing, should people who work for tip not be eligible to vote?
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I would be thrilled if Harris announced taxes on Wall Street shenanigans.
But I highly doubt it
The difference is, I believe her.
I think we might start to see CEOs working for tips.
They would totally do that. It's not far from the $1 salary with millions in stock incentive scam.
Typically they do, just they call it a "performance bonus" and it's baked into their contract
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I would rather outlaw asking for a tip. And force all restaurants to pay a fair wage and price that into the food price.
The increase of the minimum wage seems more interesting.
This is dumb but politically necessary. Big issue in Nevada, good signifier of who is "on the side of the working person."
But specifically making tips non-taxable encourages more employment to be tip-based.
Makes more sense to cut taxes for these same people by expanding the tax bracket that goes untaxed (currently first $11k).
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