At least five states are considering requiring full minimum wages for tip earners this year

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 1055 points –
More states are considering requiring full minimum wages for tip earners this year
nbcnews.com
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Lmao this has got to be the most misplaced anger ever. You're mad at people that don't even make minimum wage aren't paying taxes on the maybe $35k a year? How about the billionaires that basically don't pay taxes? Maybe we should deal with that first.

It's been a long time since ither of you've been a server, huh? They're doing better than that unless they are part-time.

Your point stands, that taxing billionairs is good, but a full-time server is probably doing 50k+ in all but the lowest cost of living areas. Because a tipped employee earns a % of goods sold, they are hurt less by inflation. The rising prices people pay result in higher tips. But since most places aren't cash, only the vast majority of their tips are via card and thus recorded and reported.

TLDR, they aren't as bad off as people think, and they are mostly taxed correctly.

50k ain't shit these days

That's at the minimum. My friend clears 100k working fine dining, but I know that's an exception.

Considering a 4 top will be guaranteed, get a bill over $100 their averages have risen. And since I am in California, they get their county's minimum, which is $17/hour plus tips. So my friends who serve part-time make about 60k annually here. Not bad for part-time work.

This is why I think most states should be moving our direction, as the article states.

Servers aren't getting a constant influx of people every day that they work, it varies from day to day except for the most popular places, even then tips aren't consistent amongst different groups of guests at popular places.

It's not their fault that their income comes from untaxed tips because their boss isn't paying them a taxable wage.

All business is like this, which is why we average our earnings in these discussions.

When I managed a grocery store where tips were super rare and never % based, the slow days were about $36k earnings, and the busy days were about $92k. Unfortunately, a server still has to be present on slow days, which may be low earning days, but often that's balanced with another preferred shift.

Did they take the job? Who's fault is it that they're showing themselves to be 'taken advantage' of?

Not everyone takes a job because they want to, a lot of people wait tables because they need some source of income. They're being taken advantage of because they're willing to work for anything.

For reference, Musk paid 8.3 billion in federal taxes in 2021, after all the evasion tricks. So even if the servers are being taxed correctly, who cares, it doesn't actually impact the economy.

It does. That's how taxes work. Musk's taxes don't benefit everyone equally. The server's taxes will be split, and the portion that goes to their state may be one that a billionaire doesn't pay into.

But it doesn't matter since you've created a straw man argument. I don't disagree with anything you've said about taxing the rich. You just take exception to me stating that servers also pay taxes for some baffling reason.

How much is that expressed as percentage of his total wealth?

A quick search revealed $185b, which is probably his net worth and not his total wealth, but we'll go with it:

8.3 / 185 * 100 = ~4.49%

For reference, I paid over 20% of my total wealth last year.

So I actually paid more than 4x as much tax as Musk did, relative to the amount of wealth we have.

If he paid 37 billion dollars in taxes, you would be satisfied? I find "wealth tax" to be completely separate from income tax discussions.

I'll be satisfied when the quality of life for average citizens starts going up again.