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.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
143 points (98.0% liked)
politics
18866 readers
21 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Tips are bullshit and workers should be required to paid a living wage.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
Wish my wages were taxed at those brackets
I'll guess if you're non-US, you're also getting things for your taxes such as healthcare and other services. For us, it's essentially a la carte pricing, so for many of these people in the lower tax brackets, healthcare is much more than taxes.
The bottom 50% of earners pay about $700/yr in federal tax. State and local taxes, property tax, school tax, and sales tax on top of that. "Average" income tax is $15,000, only due to wealth disparity. The bottom 50% pay less than 2.5% of all income tax.
Average healthcare cost is around $14,000/yr, so even for solidly middle-class people, healthcare costs are the same or higher than paid taxes, so that is probably much closer to, if not more than you may be paying.
Paying tax is a civic responsibility. The real pain comes from not feeling like you get what you pay for. I've no issue with coughing up some cash for safe roads and food inspectors, but when we have bridges collapsing and healthcare isn't considered a human right, it makes for some discontentment.
The us also has a $14,600 standard deduction that effectively adds a 0% bracket and increases the lower thresholds by that amount (people in the higher thresholds would probably itemize, decreasing their effective tax even further).
The IRS does index the tax brackets for inflation.
Also, that table does not include state taxes.
There is a lot more to it than the table. I think it was OP's article mentioned that there were bills circulating to eliminate the state income tax on tips as well as just the federal.
I mentioned some of the other taxes in my other replies a bit, but other than paying taxes, I'm not much of an expert. Plus if most people couldn't be bothered to read the original article, I'm not going to look up a bunch more data they won't read. 😁
Our taxes could be worse, but they could also be much better. I don't know if these tip tax plans will do much, as it's <3% of people making tipped income according to the article if I'm remembering it right from yesterday. Something that would help the bottom 50% of earners seems like it would be worth the effort instead, instead of cementing tip culture as a substitute for fair wages, but that's just my opinion.
So the title is misleading?
It's just a title, it says what the article is about, but it can't say everything. But when everyone comments based on the title and not the article, we risk creating misinformation.
Trump and Harris can both say we should not tax tips, but if that's the end of the story from Trump, but it's part of a multi-pronged approach, that's what we need to be sharing and commenting on.
Everyone's points about tipped jobs being exploitative are correct, but that isn't what the article is about. If we just take it as Harris and Trump both want to do the same thing, that's a half truth, and that is what many of these comments perpetuate. Both sides or this are not the same, and it does a disservice to us all to treat it as such.
Having a more descriptive title can help, like if it said "Harris presents competing plan for removing tax on tips," but it is somewhat redundant as they wrote the entire rest of the article about it. I feel this is why we include the article with the post, and not just the title, no? 😉
I feel I'm sounding a bit harsh, which isn't my intent, but it irks me when I can go through a comment section and see just about everyone has missed the point.
This is utter nonsense. Outlaw tips and make them subject to normal minimum wage.
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.
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.
So many people worshipped this fucking asshole for decades. All it takes to impress a large number of Americans is a couple of cruel quips.
Why shouldn’t people pay taxes on tips, though? I pay taxes on 100% of my income…
My answer would be that there shouldn't be tips. Everyone should be receiving a living wage and tips should be relegated to the vulgar past.
I agree, but that’s not an answer to my question. It’s an answer to a different question.
Because, in the vast majority of cases, those who are getting tips don't even get guaranteed standard minimum wage, but something substantially lower. Most of the time, these are people who are going to get an EIC anyway, so just let them keep it in the first place.
Most of them don't already. They just don't report cash tips on their taxes. This was a cheap way for Trump to gain votes, so Harris went along with it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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?
Until Reagan there wasn't any tax on tips because it was considered gifts, not income. The word 'gratuity' still reflects that.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I would rather outlaw asking for a tip. And force all restaurants to pay a fair wage and price that into the food price.
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Why don't they just fix the minimum wage problems and stop allowing tipped jobs to have a lower minimum wage. Also stop letting million plus "charity" organizations employ disabled workers at $0.25. ( Goodwill is a scam)
Yeah why don’t they just fix it?
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?
load more comments
(7 replies)
view more: next ›