3 ms·
I suspect most people tip on the after-tax amount when they calculate it themselves. I get that you don’t. I also know people who tip on the non-alcohol amount.
by jaxn 4y ago
I suspect most people tip on the after-tax amount when they calculate it themselves. I get that you don’t. I also know people who tip on the non-alcohol amount. Personally, I have always tipped post-tax.
These are also low-margin businesses. A post-tax surcharge keeps your overall bill lower than if they had raised prices, which would also raise the tax amount. The high labor costs are going to be passed on to consumers regardless. The surcharge shorts the government (which most of us are probably fine with).
- illumin8 4y agoI always tip on my alcohol purchases, and usually tip 20% regardless of how good or bad the service was. It's mainly because the sales tax is over 10.25% in our county. If the tax were only 5-6% like in most places in the US, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. The food prices are also quite a bit higher here than in most places, but that's just due to cost of living. It is not uncommon to spend $200 to feed a party of 4 even without alcohol, so that tip on the extra $20.50 starts to add up.
- z0r 4y agoI think tipping post-tax is part of the longer term inflation of tipping. Once 10% pre-tax was the acceptable tip, then 15% during the 90s, and now it has drifted to 18%, 20% and possibly soon above. Somewhere during that drift it went from being pre-tax to sometimes, and even most of the time, post-tax. All this despite it being a percentage of cost and thus scaling with the price of goods naturally.
- illumin8 4y agoTrue, the drip drip drip continues...
- KMnO4 4y agoI live in Ontario, and most people don’t (unless they use the button on the card reader). Sales tax is 13%, so a 15% tip is pretty easy to estimate as “whatever the tax is plus a bit more”.
- pxx 4y agoNo, this doesn't work. See e.g. https://www.taxconnex.com/blog-/covid-surcharges-and-sales-tax https://www.taxconnex.com/blog-/covid-surcharges-and-sales-t... for cases where it's explicitly been made clear that surcharges are also subject to tax.