Harris pledges to work to end taxes on tips for service industry employees, echoing Trump vow

Beaver [she/her]@lemmy.ca to politics @lemmy.world – 406 points –
Harris pledges to work to end taxes on tips for service industry employees, echoing Trump vow
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Maybe we should talk about the history behind taxing tips...and Social Security checks. Hint: it was Ronald Reagan and he raised them to pay for cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/02/05/New-Internal-Revenue-Service-rules-for-reporting-tips-have/9750413269200/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Thank you! I did not know that.

It always comes back to Reagan. This is what happens when you elect an actor celebrity with fucking active dementia to office. He becomes a useful tool to enact policy that the general public does not benefit from because he can remember the lines and deliver it in a package that they are willing to swallow.

Let's not do it again.

So many people worshipped this fucking asshole for decades. All it takes to impress a large number of Americans is a couple of cruel quips.

Why shouldn’t people pay taxes on tips, though? I pay taxes on 100% of my income…

My answer would be that there shouldn't be tips. Everyone should be receiving a living wage and tips should be relegated to the vulgar past.

I agree, but that’s not an answer to my question. It’s an answer to a different question.

Because, in the vast majority of cases, those who are getting tips don't even get guaranteed standard minimum wage, but something substantially lower. Most of the time, these are people who are going to get an EIC anyway, so just let them keep it in the first place.

Doesn't make any sense, income is income is income, if it's a remuneration you get for work you accomplish your should pay taxes on it. You've got waiters making 100k a year (before you say that doesn't happen, I worked with a bunch of them) that would pay taxes on 15k and the rest would be tax free while you make 60k a year and pay taxes on everything?

And, if we get rid of tipping and pay them a fair wage then all of the smoke and mirrors / abuse goes away. Further, maybe you shouldn't be paying much if any taxes on 60k/year...

Quit falling into the logic trap that this is a fight between those who don't get enough. The rich need to be paying a hell of a lot more and the poor need to be paying a hell of a lot less.

You're mixing issues there, this is exactly what eliminating taxes on certain forms of income would lead to, fights between people of the lower classes, I can tell you from experience because at my previous job we were in this exact situation, salaried employees knew that tipped employees didn't pay taxes on everything they got and would work against them when negotiating to renew their collective agreement instead of joining hands and fighting against the employer.

The fact that rich people don't pay their fair share is a separate issue entirely and even if then did it wouldn't make it ok to eliminate taxes on certain work related forms of incomes instead of adjusting tax brackets.

I'm not mixing anything. I am very consistently advocating for:

  • Eliminate tipping entirely
  • Pay people a living wage
  • Make the bottom tax bracket quite large

So you keep answering a question that wasn't asked then.

I provided both answers... I love how you're here to defend the rich.

salaried employees knew that tipped employees didn’t pay taxes on everything they got and would work against them when negotiating to renew their collective agreement instead of joining hands and fighting against the employer.

So the salaried employees were the rich in this case. Fucking petty-ass losers. So worried that a peon might get paid that they had to fuck themselves in the process.

No, the tipped employees were the rich because they had the same earnings but paid about 10k less in taxes. In some departments the tipped employees were the ones who made the most money in the whole building, I'm talking 500$ a shift in tip, 5 shifts a week, taxed on whatever they felt like putting on their weekly report.

So fucking report them to the IRS to make them pay their taxes. You're talking about tax fraud right now. You're also talking about the exception and not the rule. Most tipped employees have a guaranteed wage of around $2/hr and don't end up making anywhere near a living wage. Quit trying to fuck over the tipped workers and instead go after the corporate bosses and the billionaires. They're the problem... not your tax fraud buddy sitting next to you working for tips.

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Most of them don't already. They just don't report cash tips on their taxes. This was a cheap way for Trump to gain votes, so Harris went along with it.

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