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Originally Posted by
oldmunchkin
In the US, tips are calculated (unless it's gone up) at 8% of the server's total sales for the month. When this law first came out, the place I worked with took out those taxes once a month, in the middle of the month, because there were times that some of us actually OWED more than our checks were. Hell, the lady was trying to make sure we had the ability to pay our rent and utilities! If she had taken it out of both checks, all of us would have been living on the streets! :mad:
Irrelevant. Your tips are classed as income, if you've already received most of your income (and spent it) then the fact that your tax exceeds your remaining income is irrelevant. You still owe your tax.
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Hmmm, here we used to get actual coins and bills (nothing larger than a $10) so we could learn to "count back change", something that has become a, sadly, lost art!
If its lost then does it matter if cash is too?
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Not really! Those tips are supposed to make the difference between the server's actual per hour wage and the minimum wage! When I last worked as a waitress, minimum wage was $5.00 per hour, and waitress minimum wage was $1.85 per hour! (It may be higher now, not sure.) Hella big difference, ain't there! :mad:
So tips are wages then, you just said it.
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I like to be able to decide how much to tip my server/bartender. If the service is superb, they get tipped that way. If the service is shitty, I will leave exactly 8%!
If service is good I will leave upto 10%, if service is awful I will leave either nothing or a penny.
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If tips were moved to a cashless system, it would ensure quite a number of people would have to do without some of the daily necessities since many places would only pay them out on payday instead of daily. Do you know that those tips often bought food for my family, or diapers for those with small kids? Not everyone can live as well as you do. Some of us don't make a living wage, and without those tips would be fucked! :confused: Many of the people I know in the service industry basically live on their tips, with their checks (small as they are) being used for the big stuff like rent/house payments, car payments and insurance, and utilities!
Irrelevant.
All other employees only get paid on payday, why should service people be any different? You're still getting paid your same amount, just need to balance your expenditure. Perhaps you should bemoan that being a lost art? :rolleyes:
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Originally Posted by
oldmunchkin
Then why, on pay stubs etc, does it show where 8% of your total sales is being counted as tips and being taxed? No where I have ever worked did it any differently! As far as I know, that's the way it is set up for every place, since the bullshit tax is a federal fucking law! Since I was one of those people who didn't want the IRS to get one penny more than they should, I kept track of my total sales (before sales tax added on) and checked that the total was correct...each and every check it was stolen out of! By it's very definition, a tip is a gift! Gifts should NOT count as income, PERIOD!
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
Firstly a tip is wages, you've already argued that yourself.
Secondly, gifts are classed as income in anything. If I give a bonus to someone, that is a gift, that gets taxed. If I buy someone a gift and give it to them for work purposes, then that becomes a "benefit in kind" which should be declared and get taxed! Anything you get from employment gets taxed and treated as income. Why should service people not pay their fair share of taxation? That is what you're demanding. If a service person earns income + tips of $20,000 and a computer programmer gets an income of $20,000 per year and a telesales person gets an income of $10,000 per year plus commission of $10,000 per year ... they all earn the same amount of income. You're insisting the telesales and programmer pay more tax than the waiter. Why is that fair? Why should they owe more tax?
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Maybe that burden seems low to you, but to someone that it might make a difference whether the kid has milk or food this week, it's damned high! Or maybe it means being able to buy health insurance, or a decent car. It adds up over time, and can amount to a hell of a lot of money to someone making less than $20,000 per year! Just to have it taken out of the checks, even if you get it back at the end of the year.
Irrelevant. The burden is the burden however you earn it.