Cindy Kramer, 38, works well over 60 hours a week juggling four different jobs in Staten Island, New York, to support her child and make ends meet. Two of those jobs are bartending.
Like many in the service industry, Kramer is in favor of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate tax on tips, one that Vice President Kamala Harris also endorsed with certain guardrails and which has already seen movement in Congress.
“Of course, it will make me less stressed (to have) a couple hundreds in my pocket,” Kramer said. She added she isn’t sure if she currently makes enough from bartending to pay federal income tax.
But whether Kramer could actually see those savings is uncertain. With Trump slated to take office in January, only a small sliver of employees – which include restaurant servers, hospitality workers, waiters, bartenders and hairdressers – would see the tax benefit. That’s because a large share don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax.
Trump had previously suggested he would eliminate federal income and payroll taxes on tips. But questions remain on how that would work and whether it would be possible to eliminate both those taxes. Trump has not provided many details about the specifics of his plan.
Tax cut promises were among the biggest economic reasons why some communities voted for Trump. With many Americans worn down by inflation, a flurry of pledges including on overtime pay and Social Security benefits also struck a chord.
But it was the no tax on tips promise that had the most sticking power, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Economic experts told CNN Trump could put his promise into action, especially because versions of the pledge have received bipartisan support. Biden even indicated he supports it, along with raising the minimum wage.
But critics say there are thorny issues involved and that such a change wouldn’t help that many low-income employees. Kramer herself isn’t sure if she qualifies for the threshold to benefit.
“It’s more than a sound bite,” Shierholz said. “It’s much more complex than that.”
Who benefits from no tax on tips?
Despite their small numbers, tipped workers are highly visible in American life. About 4 million people worked in tipped occupations in 2023, or about 2.5% of all employment, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University, a policy research center.
Tipped workers skew younger (teenagers make up 3% of overall employment, but 13% of tipped occupations) and are paid less.
That means many earn too little to owe federal income taxes – 37% of tipped workers fell into this category in 2022, the Budget Lab found.
John Seymour, the owner of sit-down restaurant chain Sweet Chicks in New York City, said that full-time employees at his restaurant would likely make enough to meet the threshold to owe income taxes. But in a city like New York, many front-of-house staff are only working part-time.
“The only effect that it (cutting taxes on tips) has is a positive effect. Them (the staff) earning more of an income is always a benefit to us,” Seymour said. Minimum wage isn’t enough to pay the bills, he added.
There could be a more visible impact in states like Nevada, which has the highest proportion of tipped workers in the US, many of them working in the hospitality industry.
The proposal could also be relatively inexpensive compared to Trump’s broader tax plans. While extending the 2017 tax cuts would be about $4 trillion, in comparison, the Budget Lab at Yale University estimates no tax on tips could cost anywhere from $60 billion to $200 billion over 10 years.
Thorny issues
While not every tipped worker meets the threshold for owing income taxes, every worker in America pays payroll tax on their first dollar of income. Trump has briefly mentioned eliminating payroll taxes on tips; while that would ensure that every tipped worker gets some benefit, it also raises the cost and brings up more complicated issues.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a bill in July titled “No Tax on Tips Act,” which would allow workers to deduct tips paid by cash, check, credit card and debit card on their federal income taxes. However, it would not eliminate federal payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare and total 15.3%, half of which is paid by employers.
Cutting payroll taxes could impact the lifespan of Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is already predicted to be insolvent by 2034, according to the Social Security trustees.
Trump and Congress would also have to proactively work around tipped workers’ Social Security calculation, Ernie Tedeschi, the Budget Lab’s director of economics and former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the Biden administration, said. Exempting tipped income from Social Security taxes could mean calculation for the Social Security benefits will not include tipped income, effectively cutting benefits for those workers.
Businesses and workers could also find ways to take advantage of the law, such as reclassifying commissions and bonuses as tax-free tips if there aren’t sufficient legal safeguards.
What would help tipped workers instead?
Many economic experts who spoke to CNN advocated for raising the federal minimum wage for tipped workers. The tipped minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted since the 1990s, Tedeschi said.
The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour, but they must make at least the federal hourly minimum wage of $7.25 or their employers have to cover the difference. Many states and municipalities have higher minimum wages and minimum tipped wages, while some states have eliminated lower minimum wages for tipped workers.
The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada said it supports ending taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers, as well as raising the federal minimum wage.
“If tip workers were all getting $17 an hour as a base wage that would matter so much more than not having to pay income taxes on their tips,” Shierholz said.
And the tax code is already complicated, she added.
“If you want to help working people, then you should have policies that are about the level of your income, not the type of income that you earn,” Shierholz said.
Others point out that the policy only helps one kind of low-income worker.
Comparing a waiter at Waffle House and a cashier at McDonald’s, “they’re both low-income workers, both essentially in fast food service, but because culturally we tip one, there’s one that might get a benefit from this proposal,” Tedeschi said.
CNN’s Tami Luhby and Matt Egan contributed to this report.
