“No tax on tips” is an industry plant

Cash vs Card & Contactless Tipping

• Debate over how much tipping is still in cash vs digital; answers vary widely by region and venue (NYC still sees lots of cash; others say almost all tips are on cards now).
• Some deliberately tip cash to avoid card fees, keep tips off the books, and ensure management can’t skim or misallocate digital tips.
• Others argue card rewards plus cash-discount/surcharge structures make cash payers worse off, and that the trend is steadily toward cashless, even if there are regional holdouts.

How Tipping Law Actually Works & Wage Theft

• Multiple comments clarify: in every state, total pay (wage + tips) must at least equal the applicable minimum wage; “$2.13/hr” is a tip-credit mechanism, not a legal minimum total pay.
• Several insist the real problem is wage theft and weak enforcement: employers underpay, mis-credit tips, or fail to top up to minimum wage; workers fear retaliation or blacklisting if they report.
• West Coast and a few other states forbid tip credits; tipped workers get the full state minimum plus tips, yet tipping culture persists.

Who Benefits from “No Tax on Tips”

• Many see the policy as an industry-backed distraction from raising minimum wage and ending tip credits, with limited upside for the poorest workers (who often owe little or no income tax anyway).
• The deduction is capped (e.g., $25k, phasing out around $150k income) and doesn’t touch FICA; critics say it’s more symbolic than transformative.
• Some small-business anecdotes claim a “significant positive impact” on staff; others argue employers will use it to justify not raising wages and to normalize more tipped roles.

Tipping Culture, Service Quality, and Fairness

• Deep split: some insist tipping clearly produces more attentive service and high earning potential for “good” servers and bartenders; others report equally good or better service in non-tipping countries.
• Strong moral objections: tipping is framed as class-signaling, coerced deference, and effectively a regressive “tax on generosity” that advantages attractive or majority-race workers.
• Many argue restaurant owners offload labor costs to customers; non-tipped workers (cooks, janitors, many service jobs) are seen as unfairly excluded.

Expansion of Tipping & Payment Dark Patterns

• Widespread resentment of POS prompts (often pre-service) at coffee shops, takeout, online retail, delivery apps, and even random e‑commerce checkouts.
• Delivery apps are described as de facto bidding markets: pre-tips influence whether drivers accept and how fast they deliver, shifting risk and pay-setting from platform to customer.
• Several call this drip pricing and deceptive by design; some respond by tipping less, boycotting tip-prompting venues, or avoiding delivery apps entirely.

Policy Concerns & Perverse Incentives

• Commenters worry “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” create incentives to expand tipped and over-time-heavy models and to relabel other compensation as “tips”.
• Others foresee new tax-evasion schemes and more carve-outs complicating an already complex, loophole-ridden tax code.