Tipping in Canada
 

I did a search for "Tipping in Canada" but only found US tipping threads.

We will be in Canada (Calgary / Rocky Mountains) soon and I am wondering if the tipping "rules" are the same as in the US.
How much in a restaurant, bar, how much for the hotel room cleaner?

Thanks in advance.

Basically the same though maybe not so extravagant as major US cities where the "expected" tip seems to be creeping upwards every year. 15% for food service, at the bar, or any other personalized service. In some provinces the sales tax works out to about 15% so tipping whatever the tax was is convenient. Not sure about BC.

Not sure about hotel room cleaners, I'm sure a lot of people don't tip at all and I'm sure other people do too.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the places you go to in the Rockies have a "recommended tip" spelled out at the bottom of the bill as you're going to a tourist destination. I've noticed in Toronto that a lot of restaurants now helpfully point out that tipping is customary and that you should leave at least an X% tip. Some restaurants even conveniently do the math for you and give you a few options.

I agree with zkzkz, some people tip, some people don't so don't feel any pressure. Try to ignore the "helpful recommendations" and if you do tip, tip according to service - after all that is what its supposed to be for!

Same in BC - Around 15% for good service.

That sounds like the European system and doesn't sound right for Canada? In Europe it is acceptable to leave just a few euros on a €100 dinner. 10 euros would be a "good" tip. In Canada, shouldn't I leave at least $15 on a $100 dinner bill?

Yes, $15 tip on a $100 dinner is reasoable. But you can calculate the tip on the pre-tax total. Or to make it easy, leave a tip equivalent to the taxes (except in Alberta where the taxes are lower).

For hotels, I usually leave $1-2 per night for the cleaners, a bit more when the entire family of three stays in the room. At a recent stay at the YQB Hilton, the cleaner left a very nice thank you note after the first night.
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13F

We have/had the same thing here. A generation or two ago, 10% was the norm in Canada.

+1. The US argument of the servers being paid slave wages doesn't wash here.

But, back to the original Q - you can generally double the GST as an indication of how much to tip.

For hotel room tipping, that's all over the place. I usually leave $1-2/day rather than a lump sum at the end. Of course, the rule there is pretty loose and plenty of people don't leave a tip at all.

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I'll admit I've never been one to tip the housekeeping staff, though I've recently begun thinking I should. On that note, how exactly do you tip the housekeeper? Where do you leave the money so that she knows it's for her and not just some money you left sitting around?

I use the in-house note pads and write "Thank you" in English or whatever language is native. Under the 1st sheet, I enclose a US $1 (or whatever else is appropriate). For Canada, I leave a loonie/toonie on top of the note pad.

Lastly, I leave it in a place I think the housekeeper will see when she enters the room. So, sometimes it's on the corner of my bed or sometimes it's on the counter of the bathroom. More often than not, on the bed.

Many housekeepers have actually written back.

I usually leave 15% at restaurants and $1/night in hotels. I tend to leave it on the desk, usually with a thank you, like Braindrain does. I have left spare change on the desk and not had it taken, unless there is a note indicating its for the housekeeping staff.


In restaurants, I used to use the sales tax as my guideline.

In Alberta, you can triple the GST (5%), or in BC, round up on the HST (which is 12%) on the bill. I tip before taxes.

15-20% depending upon service in restaurants and bars.

I leave $5/night in hotels for housekeeping.

$5-10 for bell boys(girls) depending on how much luggage they haul. $20 if I think I'm going to need some future special favour during my stay. :)

$10-20 for hotel check-in people again if I think I may need future favours (more if I discern the chance for, or am given, a room upgrade):)

$2-3 for car valets each time I take my car out.

Airport/rental shuttle people get $2-3 if they help with my bags.

$10 for good tour guides whether walking or on a bus.

I/We usually tip $1-5 for the maid depending on how much of a mess I/we make, if we ask for extra stuff (towels), etc. Normally there's a notepad & pen in the room so we'll leave the money on top of a written thank you message (along with any other requests) and leave it either on the desk or night table. We try to tip daily vs the end of the stay because who knows when maids have their vacation days. Tipping daily also occasionally yields us extra nominal freebies like chocolates, bottles of water, etc.

It wouldn't have occurred to me to tip for either of these. Unless the tour guide is a private tour guide arranged just for my group. The others seem high but absolute amounts will depend on your budget.


Fwiw my personal rule for restaurants for a meal with good service was 15% or $2 whichever was greater -- I always thought the waitresses in the cheap breakfast diners put more work in than the staff in the expensive restaurants and it never seemed fair that they got much less.

As someone that does both tour guiding and hotel check-ins, I'd love to be PunishedEdmontonian's client :D

Now, I don't know for other provinces but in Québec, tip-earners are taxed on their tips. Waiters have to report them and the tax agency has access to cash registers to make sure there's no fraud. When you tip under 15%, the waiter effectively pays it from his/her pocket.

This awful fiscal rule has made tipping pretty much mandatory, though of course nobody is allowed to tell clients!

Looks like the Quebec tax authorities are following the line of the U.S. I.R.S. where servers are presumed to have been tipped and are subsequently taxed on 15% unless they can prove otherwise.

In restaurants where tips are shared between all staff, how are calculations from CRA done there?

I'm just not seeing CRA going into every single cash register receipt roll and figuring out the 15%... :confused:

That was my thought. When I used to work in restaurants, the tips were pooled and distributed based on your position (host, waiter, bus). If its 15% of total receipts, then I know a lot of people who were owing a lot, and a lot of people who were under-reporting. In fact, I thought that tips were calculated by CRA as a minimum percentage of income as an hourly wage.

I'm pretty sure CRA does some kind of auditing of gratuity income at restaurants because I recall my dad reading an article in the Sun about a couple of former coworkers at a restaurant he used to work at getting nailed for under-reporting gratuity income. I don't recall if the article mentioned how these guys got on the radar of CRA though.

Well that's not quite right. i think the government and whatever trade organization represented the unions negotiated a settlement where the gov't taxed a presumed amount -- but it's not 15% it's somewhat lower. Actually I think it's not based on the receipt amounts at all. I think it's a percentage increase on their salary so it's hard to figure exactly what it comes to.

But it's more complicated than that too. The salaries are set based on the expectation of a certain amount of tips. Even the minimum wage is lower for jobs where tips are normal.

If you were negotiating a contract with a client or choosing between jobs at different employers you're certainly going to take into account any benefits you get whether they're health benefits, bonuses, or tips.

It's probably those fools reported zero tips (or close to it) for multiple years. CRA auditors have better things to do than running through cash register rolls.

In Ontario, the lower minimum wage is for "liquor servers", and it's $8.90 compared to the general $10.25 minimum wage. I assume this refers to the wait staff as well as bartenders in a licensed restaurant.

Agreed. I think the advice here is generally consistent with the discussion and advice in this thread. YMMV.

CRA? They are the nice guys. Nothing compared to Ministère du Revenu. Those are the ones checking out cash registers to make sure they don't miss a penny.

I see you mean, though I can assure you it was decided unilaterally by the government.

In any case, YVR Cockroach used the right wording: you are presumed to have been tipped and taxed on the 15%.

Tipping is 10%-20%, and is OPTIONAL, not mandatory.

One should not feel bad for tipping, or tipping well for good service. One should not feel bad for not tipping, for any reason. It's your perogative.

In Canada, tips are subject to voluntary delarations of tip income. Most just declare that they are bad servers ;) I would guess that the average server declares 1/10th or less of thier tips. Most pay no tax.

It's basically a tax free income. I have personal knowlegde of this. CRA has no interest in clamping down & politicians have no motivation to change it.

TIPS should be held and then distributed on an employess paycheck where tax and other deductions are properly deducted.

I would guess it's harder to not declare your tips if you are a server in a restuarant compared to being a bartender at a local pub. I rarely see people around me in a restaurant paying cash anymore, where in the local pub, most people pay cash as they get each drink.

It makes no difference. I worked at one of the bigest employers in town, where we would get hundreds of dollars of charge tips everyday (credit card and room charges combined). But at the end of the year, most of us would still claim zero on our income taxes. What makes you think this is hard to do?

Thanks, Sean.

Good to hear from someone with first-hand experience.

Tipping guidelines in Canada are similar to those in the USA.. One exception, is the Province of Quebec, where (for the most part) tip will be included as part of the bill.. (Similar to dining 8+ people elsewhere).

My obviously mistaken assumption there is more of a paper trail when I tip by credit card instead of cash. Not having been a server, I figured the employer recorded these tips on the T4 or something. They have to account for the money coming in somehow.

I agree, and it's the biggest scam imaginable. Everyone else pays tax on their hard earned money. Why servers get a free ride from CRA is beyond me. There seems to be no push to fix it.

Like you say, the paper trail is there. Where I used to work, the employer dolled cash to employees out by the handful several times per week. None of it noted on our paychecks or T4s.

I do see tips included in bills, albeit informally (handwritten), when the clients are foreigners deemed bad tippers however I do not recall this being done to me, a local guy.

So maybe you've just been mistaken for a cheap Brit instead of a generous English-Canadian :P

Lol! Still working on that British accent :)

You must be in eating in different restaurants then I do. I have never seen a tip being included in the bill in Quebec with the exception of some restaurants when dealing with a larger party and even then, only when clearly indicated on the menu.

Minimum wage in Alberta is $8.80 per hour, so while not slave wage, certainly not enough to live comfortably on in this city, where monthly rent on a decent 1 bedroom apartment is between $800-$1000.

As for the guideline of double the GST as mentioned above, that is 10%, and well below the general standard in Calgary, and you will be remembered should you choose to return.

As a Calgarian, I will tell you that Calgary is a pretty well off city, with a lot of disposable income, and tipping is generally higher than most other spots in Canada or the US. I generally tip between 18 & 20%, and sometimes more for really good service. 15% is the absolute bottom of the acceptable range in Calgary. So if you wish to use the tax as a guideline, triple it, and add on a bit more if the service was good. If you tip 10% you will be marked as a cheapa$% tourist, and if you return to that restaurant, I hope you enjoy waiting 25 minutes to get menus, no coffee or water refills, and possibly the taste of spit in your food. And most Calgarians would agree, you would have earned such treatment.

That's American style tipping (but then you are Albertan)

15% is sufficient in most restaurants. The only lower exception I've seen is Chinese dim sum restaurants, where my Chinese friends only ever leave 10%!

In dim sum and pho places the tips are thrown into a large container - so there is no individual recognition. It's not even clear if the servers get the money or if the boss keeps it.

Minimum wage isn't enough to live comfortably in any city. I'd expect a salary of at least $100K to be even eligible to consider that phrase.

Ok, I've forgotten GST is 5% since I don't even pay attention to individual taxes.