Harris pledges to work to end taxes on tips for service industry employees, echoing Trump vow
Trump made a similar promise at his own rally in the city in June — though neither he nor Harris are likely to be able to fully do that without actions from Congress.
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.
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:
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.
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.
That’s what they told us with Obama, and Clinton and look where we are. Fuck that. Either actually be a leftist or get out of the way for someone who will.
It takes exactly 4 years until the term is over and nothing gets done.
kolanaki being based as always...
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.
Why shouldn’t people pay taxes on tips, though? I pay taxes on 100% of my income…
So much that is wrong with our country now was put into motion by that shitstain and his cadre.
This is utter nonsense. Outlaw tips and make them subject to normal minimum wage.
Why not abolish the tip system and require easier gets real pay instead?
i agree with you. interestingly however, my tip worker friends do not like this idea
Only because wages across the board are in the dumpster. If the kitchen guys were making $30/hr instead of $10/he they'd be complaining the other way
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.
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 doesn’t sound like a good idea at all. If a person relies on tips for a livable wage, it should be taxed. If you work for tips, it’s taxable income.
No one should be working for tips as their primary income anyway. Pay people a living wage.
I intentionally go to support restaurants where I know they pay their employees a living wage.
Echoing the other comment, tips shouldn't be the main source of income at a job, so they shouldn't incur taxes.
This sounds like a reason for companies to rely even more on tipping to compensate their workers... How about instead we make the companies pay the taxes on worker income earned through tipping? Then we can finally do away this ludicrous system we're all pressured to abide by.
Bingo, if they don't have to report tips every employer is going to say minimums and say they must be lying if it's more or less.
Wow I actually really like that idea. I don't think I would've ever come up with it myself. It'd be cool to have a candidate platform made up of the best crowdsourced policy ideas.
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.
Not much of a gift anymore when everyone expects a minimum of -- what is it now -- 25%? The expected minimum percentage keeps increasing as people endlessly grandstand about the amount they pay because of how much workers depend on tips for their income. Then there's shame at play if you don't comply, with some thinking it's okay to mess with the food if one doesn't pay the expected minimum "gift". It's really just extortion at that point.
If I gave you $100 as a birthday gift, would you expect to claim it as income?
Is my birthday work that I accomplish in order to earn money?
I don't know how you can think that a gift is the same as remuneration. Meet the workers after their shift to give them a hundred if you want it to be a gift, but if you're giving it to them as compensation for the work they've accomplished while they're on duty then it's income.
If this was a "Trump idea", why didn't he do it while president?
He got paid 40$ and a meal at McDonald's
Just one of the many hundreds of things he talked about doing and then never brought up again.
He was too busy showing everybody he was a president.
Meeting with world leaders and shaking hands.
I'm sure in his lifespan he has shaken hands fir as long as I have masturburbated with my hands.
Cool. Now let service workers get paid a living wage. Then set the minimum wage to a calculated value based on the rate of inflation and regional cost of living, instead of the idiotic fixed value system. $15/hr is at least 10 years too late.
But that would leave the elites with less money to be trickle down to the economy. Don't you see the flaws in your proposal?
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.
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?
I would be thrilled if Harris announced taxes on Wall Street shenanigans.
But I highly doubt it
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.
Lol is this your first American election?
Cause we're in the phase where all of the candidates blatantly lie to us and tell what we want to hear in order to secure our votes.
Remember when Obama was going to codify Roe v Wade? Or when Trump was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it?
those two things are not remotely comparable. obama said he would sign the freedom of choice act which never went to his desk:
"The bills were referred to the Judiciary Committees of the respective Houses. Neither bill received further action in the 108th Congress. The bills were reintroduced on April 19 2007 in the 110th Congress (H.R. 1964/S. 1173), but, like their predecessors, were referred to committee without further action. "
making mexico pay for united states infrastructure is something that could never happen unless we went to war with them. Its a blatant lie from the get go.
As far as taxing tips its about intent. Harris would do it the same as obama would sign the freedom of choice but she is not likely to put all resources to get congress to change the tax code in that way. so she gets a bill she can sign. trump on the other hand is just saying something he thinks people want to hear and would not sign a bill with it in there if it had lets say raised corporate taxes or such.
The difference is, I believe her.
I think we might start to see CEOs working for tips.
They would totally do that. It's not far from the $1 salary with millions in stock incentive scam.
Typically they do, just they call it a "performance bonus" and it's baked into their contract
A CEOs income really isn't what they're avoiding paying taxes on.
That doesn’t make any sense, it’s part of income
Just another note, Biden has also mentioned he would sign this into law. This would be even better for Dems than Kamala's promise. For an election cycle, it would basically delete any value of Trump's promise to tip earners.
I've seen "no tax on tips" on Trump billboards on my area. Clearly Trump thinks it's an important issue. Having made them waste money would be a hilarious win, also preventing undecided voters from turning out for Trump on this single-issue is a clear strategic design.
I'm thinking in the political game theory, it makes sense because it's going to force Republicans to either support it or oppose it, either of which will make them look silly as trump supporters.
The revenue losses would need to be made up in another way, which would ideally be closing loopholes and more dependably taxing the wealthy. That is assuming that the segment of revenue from tips is even substantial enough to matter.
Anyway it's going to force the Trump camp to respond. And pretty much every time you do that it provokes more unforced errors from them because they are clueless.
It’s just going to let him parallel his abortion stance where he claims Dems are for his positions until he does them
I would rather outlaw asking for a tip. And force all restaurants to pay a fair wage and price that into the food price.
The increase of the minimum wage seems more interesting.
This is dumb but politically necessary. Big issue in Nevada, good signifier of who is "on the side of the working person."
But specifically making tips non-taxable encourages more employment to be tip-based.
Makes more sense to cut taxes for these same people by expanding the tax bracket that goes untaxed (currently first $11k).
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 luck getting a car/home loan when your salary looks like minimum wage (as a former coworker who didn't claim her tips found out). The whole tipping thing is idiotic. Pay a loving wage to workers.
Edit: also a living wage. I can't type on mobile apparently
This is dumb. Stop incentivizing a tipping economy. Fuck tipping.
"She stole my idea!"
"Even a broken clock is right twice a day, we're still waiting for your second time..."
Twitter and reddit are on fire with indignation that Harris DARE consider even one of their high priest's ideas viable.
" . . . echoing trump vow"
FY AP.
yeah I swear turning it off actually activates the really bullshit flrced typo mode too