3 ms·

Wait staff have had minimum wage protection for a very long time at the federal level, do you not tip them anywhere?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Wait staff have had minimum wage protection for a very long time at the federal level, do you not tip them anywhere? Different contexts. Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. And delivery drivers in New York and California are making well above the federal minimumw wage. Most importantly: a restaurant tip is split between skilled servers and kitchen staff. It's going to multiple people, each of whom have developed a specialised skill that adds value to my experience. None of that is true for someone carting my food to my home. Absent regulation, I think tipping drivers and delivery staff is good. With regulation, the tradeoff has sort of been made for me.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  > Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. This is the one thing that really irks me. This is a known thing. But everyone seems to think the solution to that is "well, the customer should fix that". Any attempt to try to fix that through Departments of Labor is met with reasons why not. Servers don't want to report their employer, etc. And then that leads to tropes like "If you don't tip well, I am being taxed to serve you". No, you're not. The IRS taxes you on an estimate of your tipped income - if you can show that it was less than that, then that's what you get taxed on. The reality is that the IRS's estimate assumes that you get 8% tips (when was the last time you ever saw that?), so most servers are undertaxed on tipped income, and don't want to rock that boat. Last time I mentioned this here, a few people piped up that this "didn't matter", because there is "no way to document cash tips for the IRS"... https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf - fill this out, once a month. It takes a good three to four minutes.

> Wait staff have had minimum wage protection for a very long time at the federal level, do you not tip them anywhere? Different contexts. Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. And delivery drivers in New York and California are making well above the federal minimumw wage. Most importantly: a restaurant tip is split between skilled servers and kitchen staff. It's going to multiple people, each of whom have developed a specialised skill that adds value to my experience. None of that is true for someone carting my food to my home. Absent regulation, I think tipping drivers and delivery staff is good. With regulation, the tradeoff has sort of been made for me.

FireBeyond 1y ago
> Even though restaurants are meant to make up the gap between the tipped and actual minimums, they often don't. This is the one thing that really irks me. This is a known thing. But everyone seems to think the solution to that is "well, the customer should fix that". Any attempt to try to fix that through Departments of Labor is met with reasons why not. Servers don't want to report their employer, etc. And then that leads to tropes like "If you don't tip well, I am being taxed to serve you". No, you're not. The IRS taxes you on an estimate of your tipped income - if you can show that it was less than that, then that's what you get taxed on. The reality is that the IRS's estimate assumes that you get 8% tips (when was the last time you ever saw that?), so most servers are undertaxed on tipped income, and don't want to rock that boat. Last time I mentioned this here, a few people piped up that this "didn't matter", because there is "no way to document cash tips for the IRS"... https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f4070--2005.pdf - fill this out, once a month. It takes a good three to four minutes.