[chriscrisby]

That’s a weird way to say a sizable majority of tipped workers do pay taxes and will benefit from this.

[aaplok]

Beware the logical fallacy. "A implies B" does not mean that "not A implies not B".

Workers who earn too little to pay taxes (A) will not benefit from a tax cut (B).

But workers who earn enough (not A) may still not benefit (not B), for example because their employer indirectly pockets the difference. That is actually being argued in the article.

So this is indeed the appropriate way of formulating the statement: at least 40% of workers will demonstrably not benefit from this.

[Izkata]

Pretty sure they are aware, they included the qualifier "a sizeable majority" instead of implying it applied to all.

[wakawaka28]

I can't read this article because of the paywall. Are they saying that taxable tips are subject to payroll taxes (which employers pay out of pocket)? That would actually benefit both employers and employees in some sense.

Some tipped workers, like bartenders, can make more in tips than a junior software engineer lol. Less taxes definitely helps their cause.

If you are concerned with indirect effects, there's quite a few pros and cons that you could extrapolate from the no tax on tips policy. These arguments are far less compelling in general.

[swagmoney1606]

But it would be true to say not B implies not A right? (contrapositive?)

[FireBeyond]

Well, to be fair, the IRS considers the average tip to be 8% for taxation purposes.

The whole "I get taxed whether you tip me or not", "I have to pay to serve you if you don't tip"? No, not so much. If you can show (there's even a hugely burdensome IRS form that might take as much as 3-4 minutes a month for cash tips) that you earned less than that 8% average, then that's what you get taxed. But most servers don't want to fill that form out, because they get ... rather more than that, and are being undertaxed already.

[lawlessone]

it's indirect tax credits for businesses that don't want to pay workers.

[reissbaker]

No, it isn't. It doesn't affect the wage they have to pay them. It just affects whether the employees need to pay taxes on tips.

[potato3732842]

There is no useful point to saying what you just said.

You can make that argument about literally anything that reduces the tax burden on people who's primary income is useful income.

[seanmcdirmid]

The tax system is graduated. If 40% don’t make enough to hit a band where income is taxed, then you can assume it’s a gentle ride from paying no taxes to not paying much taxes. And anyways, payroll taxes are by far the higher burden for service workers than income taxes.

[spondylosaurus]

Sure, but TFA makes clear that any benefit to workers from tax-free tips is laughable compared to the numbers of times the restaurant lobby has fucked them over, by repeatedly killing attempts to keep wages low. It's not even throwing workers scraps, it's more like throwing them crumbs.

[nickthegreek]

and it’s a not even a forever thing like the rich guys got. this thing sunsets.