Just because the government can't calculate income accurately doesn't mean I the consumer have to take the fall. Now there are a variety of issues why tip income isn't accurately reported, but none of that has to do with me.

Didn't a revolution occur the last time Americans were unfairly taxed? ;) (please take that as tongue-in-cheek)

I'm not American, but in America and Canada I realise I need to tip for anything above fast food. God knows how much to tip, seems like every region has different percentages. It would be immensely helpful if as part of the receipt a 'baseline' (i.e. what the government expects your average to be) tip recommendation is displayed. So I know "ok, bad service, halve that" or "nice job, double it".

Once again, would love to have a printed guideline on the receipt.

One can only hope that the IRS will not need to claw every dime of tax and allow calculations based purely on card payments where tax can be itemised.

That is ridiculous

I know this has been mentioned ad-infinitum but that's why in some countries the pay is not rock bottom (it's not great, but not rock bottom) and the incentive for performance is to keep your job. And yes, consistently good performers do get paid more (sometimes significantly more) than the average. All I want is a normal dining experience, if they server can't provide that then they should be fired.

Why would a restaurant owner allow a diner to receive poor service? Would the diner not visit the establishment again? (here's a hint, I avoid several places for bad service and I know I'm not the only one).

Can you imagine how the owner must feel if he lost a big-spending, lousing-tipping customer because the customer never tips servers (or always undertips), and finally the servers gave them terrible service for that and so he will never return. The restaurant owner has vested interested in keeping customers happy too. So part of the job description of any employee should be to keep the customer happy.

The counter-argument to this is that it's a free country, and if a owner did see value in such an approach they would do so, and if it was truly a successful way of doing things you would see restaurants everywhere that don't take tips.

How can that be? Is there a special W2 form, for waiters to submit to the IRS, geared specifically for the restaurant industry that has the restaurant populate on the form what the gross sales were (or is it net?) for the entire year at that particular restaurant or chain of restaurants?

I'd like to know from accountants and/or waiters themselves here on this thread. I'd also like to see that tax form too. Link?

Possible, but unlikely. HK isn't much of a tipping society.

According to the DoL, employers must pay a minimum of $2.13 per hour with the assumption that the balance up to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is covered by tips, however if it isn't then the employer must make up the difference. So theoretically, not paying tips would not actually dent the ability of the waiting staff to earn a "decent" wage though whether this works in practice would depend on the employer. Link here.

A direct appeal for housekeeping tips, such as you describe, is vulgar and indiscreet. I wouldn't have left anything either. Anchorage lodging is expensive enough.

I rarely tip housekeeping, and never for one-night stays. For multi-night stays I might leave $5 or $10 if the room was really, truly well-maintained, or if I've created a situation for the maid. One night at Bellagio in Vegas a few years ago my son threw up in his bed and housekeeping was rousted to our room at 200am. I tipped both responders $20 on the spot.

Speaking of direct appeals, the guy who delivers my Wall Street Journal stuck a Christmas card in the plastic sack a couple of weeks ago, and it contained his business card with a mailing address. The nature of the "holiday greeting" was crystal clear. I didn't like it, but I sent him $10 because I don't want my paper on the roof. :)

Avoiding tipping by travelling to a country with a non-tipping culture.

When I was waitressing at a pool hall a decade ago and made $2.13/hr (selling mostly drinks, with limited bar food) the employer, a chain, reported tips to the IRS by some formula like 10% of the sales divided by the # of staff, or something of that nature. Even though I made less in tips than most restaurant waiters or bartenders, this 'reported' amount was less than half of what I actually made in tips. Maybe there are other ways of reporting tips to the IRS by the establishment, but I think the waiter comes out way ahead on the taxes. Of course, the waiter can be honest and self-report all his tips, but that never happens.

I don't like the idea of tipping and hold strong against the increasing tipping culture at hotels, but I always tip at restaurants because "that's just how things are done." If you don't like it, please lobby on behalf of the servers to have laws implemented, stop going to restaurants, etc. but don't take it out on the waiter.

Valet parking tipping
 

While we're on the subject, how do you tip for valet parking when staying at a hotel? For example, if I stay a hotel for 3 nights and thus do three nights of valet parking, do I need to tip for every time I pick up the car, or only when checking out? I've been stingy on this before because valet has cost me more than $30-$40 a night, but I don't want to be rude either. I just don't know what the proper etiquette is here.

I see where the OP was going (I think :)). It wasn't so much intended to be another 10-page Travelbuzz thread about tipping cultures.

It's those little services where a real-time cash tip is expected. I do, indeed, avoid them because I hardly ever have cash on me. At least not in the U.S... So I have two options: let the guy carry my bag and then refuse to tip him or carry my own bag.

Since I am physically able, and since regardless of my philosophical view on the entire culture of tipping it would be uncomfortable to stiff the guy, I just carry my own bags. I also avoid valet parking whenever it's feasible. I don't fault the kid parking my car for expecting a tip, it's just that he doesn't take Amex.

I don't avoid tipping waiters and cab drivers...I add the normal custom to the bill and it gets charged to my credit card. (I'm talking U.S. here...not parts of the world where you negotiate for cash cabs on the street. There, I obviously carry cash for that purpose.)

It's really hotels...bellhops, valet guys, etc. I don't tip housekeeping at a regular hotel when it's just me staying there either. Once, after a villa stay with my family (where we were embarrassingly messy :eek:), I sought out the housekeeper I'd seen most often during the week and handed her a cash tip directly.

I didn't do it because I felt the culture required it, or because I felt that the labor market for housekeepers was not functioning efficiently. I just did it because we were pigs and I felt a bit bad about it... :)

That's really pushy, and I don't blame you for not tipping.

As for your question about tipping housekeeping staff in hotels in the US, here is what I do. I leave a dollar for an ordinary one night stay where I made no demands on the housekeeping staff. (No requests for extra towels, etc.)

For multiple-night stays, it is likely I have made some demands, so I leave proportionately more. I left $20 for a three night stay in Hawaii, where the housekeeper did a truly superior job and was super friendly, even greeting us by name in the hallway.

Tipping the hotel housekeeping staff is really truly optional. It's nice, especially if they went above-and-beyond for you, but not always expected nor always customary. I mentioned upthread that my husband went through college on busboy tips, so he has always been a generous tipper now that he has a college grad job and can afford to tip big. I do the same.

In my husband's eyes, every busboy, every waiter/waitress, every housekeeper is a struggling college student living on mac-and-cheese like he did when he was in their shoes.

If you're going to visit a country where tipping customary, why not follow local customs. Have you never heard the expression, "When in Rome ..."? Would you bare you soles in a country where it is offensive? Would you reach for the communal food bowl with your right hand in a country where locals would be disgusted? We read a lot about "ugly Americans" overseas. I guess there is a counterpart to this.

Personally, I think the motivation for most who stiff the server is economic (they are cheap) whether they can admit that (even to themselves).

Tips for waitstaff
 

DH works at a restaurant in a major hotel chain. Tip calculation for income tax reporting is done as follows:

- His sales x 8% = minimum reported tips.

- If non-cash tips (credit cards, room charges, etc) is more than the 8%, then the actual amount of those tips, plus any cash tips reported, is what is added to his gross pay for the week.

- If non-cash tips + cash tips reported are LESS than the 8%, then then the actual is reported and the difference between actual and the 8% is reported as "allocated" tips.

Seems to me that if you have "allocated tips", it triggers some sort of federal income tax penalty for not reporting the full amount of tips.

Is this just a rant in general or is it directed at someone's post specifically? Because it has nothing whatsoever to do with the original post in this thread.

Thank you for responding to my question. Did the restaurant's estimate of the amount of money they think you earned in tips using a formula show up in black and white as your reported income on your annual W2 from them?

Back on topic: there isn't much to add to this thread. If you don't want to tip, don't use the service. Park your car across town in the metered lot instead of using valet ;-). I firmly hold on to my bags at the hotel so they don't take them from me expecting a tip. Also when getting off the airport shuttle bus I handle my own luggage to make sure a tip is not warranted. (It is much debated whether a tip is appropriate in this case, but I feel better about not tipping when I'm not using any extra assistance.)

I staunchly hold off tipping hotel staff when they walk me to the room at check-in even when they hang around waiting for a tip. You can't avoid that service but my conscience allows me not to tip for it.

Yes, the amount was made very clear on the W2 but I'm not sure if it was listed separately under tips. It was certainly listed as some sort of income so I felt confident the IRS didn't expect me to list anything additional. Although I earned more in tips, there was no way the IRS could prove it since much of it was in cash, unless they shadowed me at work for a few days...

I'm absolutely astonished that this practice is legal. I'm guessing that it is because your tips are underestimated like you said above, why would you or anyone else complain about this practice?

If the average estimate of tips were actually more than what people take home and there were enough people penalized by such an overestimation, I would guess that trial lawyers would come around to suing the federal, state and local gov'ts for taxing on income never actually earned but rather "estimated" to be earned thus overtaxing people.

Thank you for sharing this.

Will all admissions, this thread has gone horribly OT.

But yes, tipping the housekeeping staff is "optional" and I read somewhere (please do not ask where) that it is practiced by 27% of hotel guests. Perhaps something about the anonymity of houskeeping staff (unlike a waiter) makes it easier to depart without leaving anything.

But what really troubles me is that this generous minority ends up in a position where they make up for the hotelier's lousy wages. Somehow it just isn't right - those who follow a custom have been reduced to subsidizing others. And these more and more common, brazen, preprinted tip envelopes might as well include a request from management to the effect "would you pay our employee because we won't?"

The same applies to some extent to all aspects of tipping culture. Just wish those in tip-dependent positions were directly paid the appropriate wage (which in some situations might be low) and we could do away with it altogether.

Well, I have not heard any servers on this thread complaining about the IRS calculating more tip income than they actually received. My guess is that's because that is not what is happening. The people 'complaining' mean well but do not have first-hand knowledge of how tips are reported. Let me state again that tips may be calculated differently by different establishments, but it is common knowledge that waiting tables in the U.S. is a well-paying job (considering it requires no formal education and the alternative is working for minimum wage).

Even though servers make a decent amount of money and one non-tipper per night will not destroy a server's earnings, not tipping is the crappy thing to do when it is absolutely the custom of this land.

To me it's simple. Hotel staff make minimum wage or above. Servers make ~1/3 of minimum wage, which is why I tip them while I don't tip hotel staff unless I've made a mess.

(emphasis added)

It's an interesting article, but I'm confused about what is and isn't included in quality of service. From the article:

I read it as saying (and I'd agree) that adapting to personality is a component of quality of service. Of course I don't know anything about it, but I'd also guess that the diner near your house does offer good, although unconventional, service to its clientele. If it truly had poor service, it would be out of business.

This is an over generalization, in California and several other states restaurants are required to pay servers the full minimum wage.

Wow
 

There is so much hostility and anger on this thread... :eek:

A 5-second search for "tips" on www.irs.gov reveals this page, among many others:

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc761.html

It's usually helpful to go to the source when asking such specific questions, rather than asking a nebulous population for anecdotes. The IRS website actually has many "user-friendly" pages that explain certain aspects of the tax code in layman's terms fairly well.

Again, from the IRS website, tips - whether actual or allocated - are included in box 1 of the W-2: "Wages, tips, other compensation."

It is not only legal, it is law - as in, it's not just allowed, it's required. The reason few people complain is that allocated tips are only 8%, while average actual tips are generally much higher... unless, of course, a large fraction of customers decide to stop tipping.

and as per my earlier link to the DoL web-site, federal law also requires employers to ensure that all wait staff are paid at least minimum wage including tips and must make up the difference in cases where they don't.

Of the 50 states in the U.S., only 4 mandate minimum wage at least equal to federal minimum wage ($7.25) for all workers: Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington (maybe Nevada). In the rest of the states, hourly wages start at $2.13/hour but can be higher.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

So I have to wonder...

...where and when did tipping begin? Did it begin with restaurant waitstaff, bartenders, or elsewhere? Was there a transition period when it seemed like an unsavory bribe - something you weren't sure whether to offer or whether it would be accepted?

Did people originally do it in order to obtain better service? Did they do it because they felt that a labor market was being artificially manipulated by an external power? (e.g., Compassion for workers in some sort of indentured servitude or other forced labor relationship.) Some other reason?

And how does tipping make the leap into new professions? 15 years ago, the thought had never crossed my mind to tip a hotel housekeeper. In my time reading FT, I've now read about the concept but it seems like a minority actually do it. 50 years from now, will we all be tipping housekeepers as a cultural norm?

Understanding the answers to these questions might be important in some countries where tipping seems to be encroaching...

The Singapore government still believes that to be the case and has been at great pains to stamp out the practice in the country.

When I was 18 and in high school, I was a waitress at a Pizza Inn for a few months. Back then, regular minimum wage was $3-something and wait staff minimum wage was $2.09/hr. The regular minimum wage today is way too high, but that's another topic.

I always reported my cash tips. Under-reporting is tax evasion, and I don't do that.

I didn't like working there because the place was so slow. One week, the restaurant had to add money to my paycheck because the $2.09+tips was still less than regular minimum wage.

I hate the tipping culture and wish it would go away, but at the moment we're stuck with it. When I go to a restaurant, I usually tip exactly 15%, or zero if the service is poor. I don't do complicated calculations, and I certainly don't consider the employee's personal tax situation.

I don't know if it's law, but when I worked at Radio Shack for commission, if my commissions didn't add up to minimum wage, the company made up the difference. Too many weeks of making up the difference and you were let go. The alternative was to under-report hours, which I saw frequently.

It's a rant in response to the other responses that are off-topic, as so often happens when the subject of tipping comes up on FT.

On topic; do everything yourself, and you'll not be obliged to tip at all. Cut your own hair, refuse housekeeping and just ask for fresh towels, eat at home or fast food, take no taxis, use no tour guides, handle your own bags, take your own groceries to the car, buy your newspaper from a box and park your own car.

During the times we don't feel like we want to pay tips while dining either we 1) eat at fast food places/joints in a mall food court that don't require waiter/waitress service or 2) eat at home.

I sometimes wish I had that option. :D ;)

Why?

I "only" tip if I've created an unreasonable mess like what was described in a post above.. otherwise, heck no, they are paid to clean my room. If they don't, then I call the manager.. if they do their job even to the minimum specs I'm happy. As for towels etc, I get my own off the cart 99% of the time if I need them.

I see very little reason to ever tip housekeeping

I'm just wondering where do you draw the line on what constitutes a service and what constitutes a person just doing his job. Would you tip the F/A? How about the subway driver? Would you tip the TSA for giving you a pat-down or the police for responding to a call? How about the cashier at Walmart?

There is just this aura of inconsistency amongst this entire tipping business and it would all end if employers paid their employees adequate wages like employers do.

You don't push for a system to change by participating in that system. Avoiding eating out also defeats the effort to change the system. I eat out all the time.

first time I've ever read that... thank you! Not cheating on taxes seems to be a rare trait!

Thanks for the info. :)

I probably cannot see myself doing it, maybe only in exceptional circumstances.