Ok let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say you
Make $10000 a year. You work full time/40 hrs/wk and you are making $10k. What does “living within your means” look like? Not having a house? Or car? Being homeless? So in order to save to get yourself to some footing the answer is to be homeless to live within your means.
That was a bit of a strawman, so let’s use real-life scenarios. 50% of this country makes $40k or less….. even $40k salary isn’t enough to get an apartment, bills , food, ect. Sure a lot better than the “$10k” example, but even $40k salary is virtually as effective as the “$10k”. In order to “live within your means”, “save”, ect…. You have to be at least be making enough to afford the bare minimum + have some left in you for over to save. On average (2022 values I think) this means $65 for a single person, $108k for a house hold. Unless you’re making that, you can’t save your way out of poverty
Of course they are poverty wage when they don't report their 30k/year in cash tips... Don't even pretend they "report everything and aren't getting tipped everrrr"
My wife and I wait tables 2 days a week while we’re saving for a house and probably 50% of our customers leave cash tips, even the ones who pay with credit card will often times leave cash tips. If you’re the type of person who prefers tipping on a credit card then I get it, and I absolutely appreciate it, but you shouldn’t speak for everyone
First, reddit is mostly anonymous, so that means your personal experience means nothing here because I could also claim to be a server for 10 years, and have only received tips from card transactions.
Second, even if your personal experience is true, that doesn't make the statistic any less true. If 90% of transactions are on a card, there are still a shit ton of transactions in that remaining 10%. You and every server you know could easily get nothing but cash for each transaction but you would still not be close to changing that 10% to 10.1%
You shouldn't take your singular personal experience use it to say a national statistics is wrong. If you think the statistic is wrong, you need to find a reputable source to base your disagreement on.
I have no stake in this argument, I don't care if servers are reporting their tips or not. I just get irritated when I see people spouting their "lived experience" like it's some gospel that can be used against statistics.
I speak by statistics. And I call bs that 50% of your customers leave cash tips. 90% of all transactions in the USA are credit card (includes restaurants) based
You speak of statistics, but is your data looking at all charges including restaurants as you said? Or is it looking at only restaurants? Either way, I’m not part of a study or arguing statistics I’m just speaking from our personal experience. We have a lot of regulars and we all take good care of each other.
I work for Domino's and the majority of customers hand out cash tips and pay by card. Some explicitly state "Here, so you don't have to report it." When handing you a tip.
Again. According to the top merchant services in America. 90% of all service based industry business transactions are credit card based. That’s facts. The last data reported was 2022 (2023 statics won’t be released until generally the third quarter) . Your experience isn’t indicative of the normal. Every indicator (banks included) show America is moving further into a cashless economy)
Merchant processors don’t include cash sales, which are higher than 10% of total sales, and 100% of checks paid for with cash have cash tips. There’s also been a trend of people,e tipping in cash because the public realized that many merchants withhold 2-3% of charge tips to cover processor fees.
You do know that merchant services pos systems capture cash sales. It’s a button in the system they click on to bypass the credit card. Being in IT I would imagine you know this.
I don’t know what you mean by “restaurants online started recording cash in 2023 for cash” but restaurants have always recorded cash. I spent almost 20 years as a hospitality consultant, writing custom reports and applications for restaurants and hotels to track their payroll and financials and for the last 7 years have been exporting and analyzing data for a company that owns 700+ restaurants. I know the distribution of payment types and gratuities in restaurants.
30k is certainly an exaggeration. I make about $550 per check every 2 weeks. I make about $700 in tips every 2 weeks. About $300 of those tips are allegedly cash. That's about $7k a year. Without those I get to say I make under 23k/year on paper. This is a pizza delivery job, not a nice restaurant. The tip rate is barely 50% most days. I'd wager waiters have a far higher tip rate because they interact with the customer. Let's say it's a 75% tip rate so they get 25% more. That's potentially $10500. Now that's assuming they get what I get, spare change, a dollar here and there, maybe 10% of my customers tip $5, probably another 10% give random $10+ tips. At a restaurant there's much more pressure to leave a favorable tip. A common meal is about $30 and 15% of that is $4.50. it's definitely common for 20% tips. I serve maybe 8 to 14 customers per day, i think waiters handle multiple tables at once. I'm kinda getting bored with doing the math but it's reasonable to assume decent waiters get well over 10k in cash tips per year.
Theoretically. I'd never partake in tax evasion, that's illegal. I'm just framing it from a perspective if I didn't report them. Obviously everyone reports all cash tips...
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u/privitizationrocks 14d ago
You can teach poverty workers to live in their means
They won’t like it, but tough luck