I’m afraid I’m missing your point. Are you responding to the fact that it’s more like a gift? It was an analogy not a perfect 1:1 mapping. This doesn’t change anything about my response.
My point is is it’s not a gift if it’s basically socially required for customers to directly pay the workers their fair share of their wage (which decreases the amount of payroll taxes the employer owes)
Okay. Look, we could dig into the nuances, but likening it to a gift was only to invoke the precedent of not taxing cash gifts, but if you don’t like the analogy then don’t worry about the precedent.
Either way, the point is that service workers are paid shit, even with tips, and I’m not going to begrudge them some tax savings. I have frequently gone out of my way to tip in cash just to enable them to do so.
It’s literally part of their wage. The restaurants pay them less than the normal minimum per hour because they are tipped employees.
I’m afraid I’m missing your point. Are you responding to the fact that it’s more like a gift? It was an analogy not a perfect 1:1 mapping. This doesn’t change anything about my response.
My point is is it’s not a gift if it’s basically socially required for customers to directly pay the workers their fair share of their wage (which decreases the amount of payroll taxes the employer owes)
Okay. Look, we could dig into the nuances, but likening it to a gift was only to invoke the precedent of not taxing cash gifts, but if you don’t like the analogy then don’t worry about the precedent.
Either way, the point is that service workers are paid shit, even with tips, and I’m not going to begrudge them some tax savings. I have frequently gone out of my way to tip in cash just to enable them to do so.