Generic endorsement of this comment, coming from someone who has an international business and has occasionally had to decline tips, for these (and other [+]) r

Generic endorsement of this comment, coming from someone who has an international business and has occasionally had to decline tips, for these (and other [+]) reasons. I once had a gentleman attempt to put a rather small sum of money in my hand. Call it $50. He meant it as a nice gesture, because he had been consuming my professional output for years, and it had helped his business. He could not have known, but causing me to have US-source income would have potentially exposed me to several thousand dollars in additional tax liability during that year. (Long story.) There exist ways around it, but at the very least I would have had to loop my accountant in on the incident, so we could discuss whether I have to worry about the $50 "donation." My accountant's rate is $10. Per minute. All of this was going through my head when I attempted to gracefully decline. [+] Totally separate from tax/compliance, I have social reasons why I prefer to not get tipped for things. Social expectations are a weird thing, but regardless of their intrinsic weirdness they appear to be real, and as a result I try to hew to them unless I have a really strong reason to not to. One feature of social classes in the US is that the one I aspire to be in does not accept tips. Tips are something which flow from the relatively well-off to the relatively poorly-off, and even in those relationships where I'm relatively poorly-off, lumping myself in with waiters and massage therapists doesn't sound advantageous when I hope to have a professional image closer to that of a doctor, lawyer, or investment advisor. For related reasons, I remain very concerned that many OSS developers appear to think that they should have to throw hundreds of hours of professional labor into projects used by for-profit companies so that they can be allowed to participate in Internet busking on a scale which would be sneered at by actual buskers.