alt Hacker NewsIt's fascinating to see the correlation in opinion between taxing tips and raising the minimum wage.
If the prevailing sentiment was to make things easier for low income workers, I would expect people to want to not tax tips, and increase the minimum wage. And people who want less government interference, would want less tax, and lower minimum wage. Those are the two opinions I expected to see.
But instead it seems like people want to tax tips, and increase the minimum wage, which is evidence of a kind of authoritarianism that I did not expect.
Tips are still income. If we increase the minimum wage so that people can afford to live then I can't see any reason why we wouldn't tax tips also.
If you're making $2.50/hr plus tips then I think you deserve a break and not taxing tips is a sensible break. A better solution would be to prevent restaurants from paying their people poverty wages, and if servers aren't risking starvation and homelessness if they go without tips for a week then why would you not include their tips in their regular income?
Raise the minimum wage, require servers to be paid minimum wage, and enforce a straightforward tax on people's income that doesn't distinguish wage from tips. Maybe also increase the 0% tax bracket to something more reasonable, like $20-40k, just to simplify things for people who are struggling to subsist while we're at it.