In policy proposals posted to her website, Harris called for an increase in the overall minimum wage and for the end of the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
I dislike the elimination of taxes on tips because it opens a new loophole for rich assholes but I’m 100% behind eliminating sub-minimum wages.
It does feel like we should be encouraging the end of tipping, not asking it to stick around forever.
Removing the minimum wage exception to tips does help with that. Part of the reason why tips are inventived
Plus taxes on tips as they exist already has quite a number of assumptions that tipping will always exist. For instance, assumptions of a minimum 8% tip rate for reporting. Which will be withheld from pay from at least that assumption (which you can get back if you earn less by filling)
Wouldn’t the elimination of taxes on tips entrench that non-taxable income as something servers would die before ever surrendering? Treating it as income means that whether that money is coming from hourly vs. tips is irrelevant and, at the end of the day, hourly compensation is always more reliable if all else is equal.
I agree, and we’d have to do it carefully so tipped workers continue making roughly the same as they do now.
Where I live a handful of trendy restaurants announced opened as no-tipping restaurants. They would add a 20% gratuity to every bill and claim it was used “to support a living wage and benefits” to the staff. Usually it was just sucked up into the revenue pile and used however the owner wanted.
If restaurants dropped tipping, raised their prices by 20%, and paid their staff 20% more, I would be okay with that. In the European countries I’ve visited, it seems to work just fine and food is still cheaper than where I live.
Harris’s proposal specifically includes an income limit to prevent people like hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their pay as “tips”. Trump’s version predictability does not.
It sucks for more than just that though. There’s 0 reason for tipped workers to pay less in taxes over workers making the same just by virtue of being tipped.
I would say the reliability of pay is a good reason. Tipped workers can’t count on a consistent amount of money. A bad month or even a bad week can mean rent doesn’t get paid.
