Former US President Donald Trump doesn’t miss a chance to appeal to niche voters. His most recent grab for average folks’ votes was a promise to make service sector tips non-taxable. But it appears that’s not going to fly…
Will restaurant servers and other service workers who rely on tips to make
ends meet lash back at Donald Trump at the polls, after he has to walk
back his recent high profile promise to make tips non-taxable?
Trump doubled down on his promise to the masses of resto servers during his birthday party speech in Palm Beach last month. He first floated the notion at a rally in Las Vegas the week before…
Doing his bidding
Republican Senators subsequently passed the No Tax on Tips Act — a bill that does, indeed, exclude tips given in all settings from income tax. But there’s more than one major problem with that. And together, they could embarrass Trump big time, right in the home stretch of the election campaign this fall.
First of all, the bill would have to pass the congress as well as the Senate to become law. And President Joe Biden would have to sign it into law. He could veto it if he wanted to. But there’s another factor that could kill the measure even earlier in the process…
Major hurdles
“To start, the President of the United States is not in charge of the tax code,” Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner writes in Food & Wine recently. “Various Republican representatives have shared support of the idea […] while others have voiced concerns about the practicality of the decision and its impact on the federal deficit.”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) warns, not taxing tips could lead to a $250 billion federal revenue deficit.
Some reps on both sides of the House are also complaining that the removal of tax on tips does nothing for back-of-house resto staff who don’t get them. And, so, is fundamentally unfair.
My take
Trump has repeatedly called on supporters to write a pointed message to servers on their dinner tabs over the summer: ‘No Tax On Tips’. It’s looking more and more like a pitched battle than a casual gesture to lure undecided young people to the Republican standard.
As with many of the former President’s randomly laid election platform planks, the No Tax On Tips idea appears nothing more than another passing notion of Trump’s which has become yet another problematic issue further muddying the already-chaotic campaign ‘conversation’.
Alas… The folks counting on their tips to make ends meet are being used by the presumptive Republican presidential candidate like pawns on a Chess board. According to the latest figures, there are more than 2.5 million of them out there, each one with a vote to cast. Does Trump realize that, in Chess, even a pawn can checkmate the King?
~ Maggie J.