Originally Posted by
phlashba
This is absolutely correct. So if you tip less than 10% (it used to be 8% that they had to pay taxes on) the waiter may actually be losing money.
Depends.
At a posh place, certainly. But then you're likely to get good service, and also likely to give them a tip.
Your typical waiter or waitress is quite likely one of the many workers in the US who pay no federal taxes, when it is all said and done. The tax system is overly generous on the entry level workers, and rapidly aggressive on the middle-level workers. And extraordinarily generous to the idle or working rich who live in the "mostly 15%" federal tax bracket.