(07-22-2019, 03:00 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(07-18-2019, 06:19 PM)Jags Wrote: If this somehow gets passed and my waiter/waitress is making 30k-ish I’m not tipping.  I used to be the guy that tipped very well.  My wife would complain about me giving someone 20.00 on a 50.00 bill.  Pretty sure I’m not the only one that does that.  I’d imagine some waiters/waitresses could actually make less.

A waitress or bartender is paid about $2/ hour, plus tips.  At the end of the pay period, the employer has to make sure that the wages plus tips add up to minimum wage.  If they don't, the employer has to pay the difference.  Usually the employee will reveal just enough tips so that the employer doesn't have to pay them more, but hide the rest so as to avoid taxes.
If they keep it that way, just with a higher minimum wage, there'd be little reason for you to change your tipping behavior.  Your generous tip could still be the one that bumps them up and over minimum wage.
But, side note: a lot of wait staff could actually reduce their tax burden by fully reporting their tips.  If they aren't anyone's dependent, and have a dependent, they are probably leaving EITC benefits on the table when they hide some of their income.

I have a son that works in the restaurant industry as a manager.  We have talked about this and I can assure you that the wait staff and the bartenders are making much more than $2 per hour plus tips.  As of matter of fact they earn much closer to the local minimum wage plus tips, in the case of my son he says they earn between $5 and $7 per hour (still under the minimum wage here in Florida).

Depending on the establishment the wait staff and bartenders are for the most part making $15 per hour or close to it depending on the shift that they work, and in some cases making more.  I'll give a bit of a hint here, the employer is only involved with tips that are included on a credit or debit card.  As an example, if I tip $20 on my credit card when I pay my bill, the employer will extract the taxes owed on that $20 and count the remainder towards the employee's salary.  For a customer that spends an hour in an establishment it comes down to roughly the employee making $5 per hour base salary, roughly paying $3.40 in taxes off of their $20 tip (if the customer pays with a credit/debit card) and ends up earning $22.60 for that hour worked serving that table.  That is ONLY if you tip on a credit/debit card.  Keep in mind, the taxes paid are only the employer's withholding.  When the employee files their taxes they have to count the money they received off of my $20 tip AFTER the employer took out taxes for the imperial Federal Government as INCOME and they get taxed again.  Suddenly that $22.60 becomes $19.88 which is more than the proposed $15 minimum wage.

Two things to keep in mind here.

The employer is only involved with tips that are on credit card/debit card receipts.  Cash tips don't count.  There is no verifiable paper trail for cash tips.  That is why I ONLY tip in cash and give it directly to whomever provides me a service.

The employee working a job like that "pays" taxes up front, but when they file their tax return they end up getting a "refund" of all the money that their employer held back.

Now people that think that working as a bartender or as wait staff somewhere is the same as working at McDonald's and "deserve" a "livable wage" of $15 per hour I say this.  I worked at both fast-food places as well as restaurants in my younger days.  People that work in restaurants for the most part (if that's the industry they want to go into) generally care about the job and do their best.  People that work at a fast food restaurant and think that they should be able to make a "living wage" are lazy.  I worked at a fast food restaurant when I was a teen in high school to earn money to put gas in my truck and have some fun on the weekends.  I NEVER thought that it would be a career.  Teens in high school wanted these jobs in order to do some of the "fun" stuff back in the day.  The only "adults" in the industry were managers that didn't really earn "big bucks" but were able to make an honest living.

The problem with the socialist democrats these days is that they want to make "do you want fries with that?" a career rather than a stepping stone.

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