pinniped

The whole bribing/tipping economy is insane in and of itself. I *don't* know anything about the Labor Theory of Value, but if we're going to inject real economics into this, wouldn't the logical thing be to drive towards an economy where all of the details of the transaction are on the table in advance and there isn't this big variable component on the side?

pvn

If the variability is what bothers you, just make it a point to always tip 20% no matter what the service is like, problem solved.

pinniped

I could equally solve the problem by tipping 0%

But neither choice really addresses the scourge of tipping itself.

pvn

Both of them address the problem you overtly claimed to have had, but now we know what the actual problem you have is.

sethb

According to that page, employees are required to report actual tips to their employer monthly. This requires that they track them, so just about any employee would be able to show the actual tips, no matter what anyone wanted to "allocate".

sethb

And therefore the waiter will report accurate numbers at the end of each shift, whether or not those numbers meet some arbitrary percentage. Why would the waiter sign a false statement (a criminal act) that he received more in tips than he actually got?

CJKatl

How? All the regs on measuring tips are base reporting on sales. Let's say a waiter sold $20k in a month and reported $500 in tips. The restaurant would correct his tips, per the IRS regs, and report his minimum tips per the negotiated percent of sales. Let's go with the 8% minimum, so $800 would be reported for that waiter. At the end of the year, the restaurant will hand the waiter a W2 showing what the restaurant claims is the waiter's tips, which will be the restaurant's amount or $9600. It's adorable that you think the waiter can then claim whatever he chooses, let's say $6k, but we all know what happens if you put a different amount on your 1040 then what shows on the W2. You can argue all you want, but I'm not sure how you think a server would document cash tips, which can include tips on cc sales. Is the server supposed to argue the IRS regs are wrong and should be ignored? The IRS regs are well established and the litigation wouldn't be worth the small amount saved, even if there was a chance of winning.

At dinner last night, I brought this thread up to a few people who have worked in the industry. Everyone had the same experience as mine. Nobody has the freedom to report tips in the way you think they can be reported. The IRS has strict regulations based on sales and they don't let individual waiters just willy-nilly report what they want based on self-policed claims of what is earned. The word "cheap" was used often.

The one thing that's for sure is that you haven't worked as a server. These are basics.

sethb

And the waiter files the form reporting his actual tips to the restaurant, and it says $500. So is the restaurant going to go with a calculated lie or the sworn truth?

And the waiter will have documentation (a contemporaneous diary) showing $6,000 in total tips.

The waiter's contemporaneous diary is considered proof.

CJKatl

No, it isn't. It's considered something made up by the waiter. You seem to think the IRS will believe the waiter or will be forced to accept the waiter's home brewed journal. The whole reason they've gone to sales based calculation is it's more reliable than self-reporting. That's the way it works. You can argue theoretics all you want, but that's the way it works.

As has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread, I've lived through working at a place where the IRS came in and required additional tax payments. (American Cafe Georgetown) The only waitress that didn't have to pay more was the one that showed her sales and that she had met the correct percentage of sales. The IRS was only interested in sales, not some made up diary written by the taxpayer.

I'm not going to reply to this nonsense anymore, the point is pretty clear. Other questions about tipping, yes, but not about magical self written journals that you seem to think can be a substitute for what's on the waiter's W2. That point has been beaten to death.

pvn

This thread was a lot better when it was tightwad nits bragging about how cheap they are. Now that it's armchair tax attorneys picking at each other it should be nuked and the ashes shipped over to Omni

ehallison

Every time I open this forum and see it on the front page, I think, "Are we still talking about THAT?"

sdsearch

This thread got on the front page back when it was simply a thread discussing mis-billing by one or two Marriott hotels (people writing in tips and getting billed for other stuff as a result).

Since then, the thread has veered into issues about tips in general (nothing to do with Marriott that I can tell in recent posts).

pinniped

What benefits does a bribery/tipping based economy have over one where all aspects of each transaction are fully known by all parties before entering a contract?

I've never seen a really logical argument in favor of bribes or tipping. The arguments usually boil down to either (a) someone benefiting from illegal tax evasion, (b) the producer benefiting by shifting a large portion of operating costs onto the end consumer, or (c) the end user benefiting by using the "tip" to avoid regulation or some other legal process. I don't consider any a really sound argument.

I get *why* it happens in corrupt or undeveloped economies, but I don't get why anyone in the developed world would actually advocate for this kind of system.

pvn

You're moving the goalposts. The claim you made that I responded to:

But as we now see, this complaint was a total sham. You don't care about variability. And you don't care about "shifting operating costs to the end consumer" (which is baloney anyway, that argument doesn't even pass the giggle test because everyone knows that if tips are eliminated that prices will go up, nothing is being "passed to the consumer" as the consumer is always going to pay all of these costs regardless).

pinniped

I don't see how I moved the goalposts. Please, enlighten me on how an economy where parts of transactions are embedded in tips/bribes/grease/baksheesh/whatever is superior to one that isn't?

This isn't 100% true. If bribery was fully removed from an economy, demand and labor curves would resettle at new points. The effect of moving the bribes and tips into the formal (taxed) economy would have some impact, and the new transparent prices for the goods and for the labor could react differently because of impacts from other industries. It's not as simple as "the producer would raise all the prices and the consumer would pay it." Nor is it as simple as the previously-tipped/bribed person would continue doing that job if their payment was moved into traditional wages.

There could also be a (generally positive) impact if one country successfully eliminated this stuff from their economy while all of their neighbors were still doing it. Demand on the whole could rise from foreign people and companies who don't want to deal with the BS or who are prohibited by their own local laws from doing so to begin with.

EDIT: Yeah, we're pretty P/R at this point. Somewhere back on Page 1 I think I acknowledged that I tip at Marriott and have never had a billing problem associated with it. I'm guessing this thread will get locked soon, as this dead horse is mostly decomposed at this point.