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Mary Paschall's avatar

I own a restaurant in Savannah Georgia. We pay our servers the federal minimun of $2.13 an hour.

Our OK servers make $25 per hour and our best srvers make $35-$38 an hour. Almost never less then $30 per hour. Right now they pay tax on it all. If the Feds stop taxing tips the best servers will be earning $50-$55 per hour. I will get an even better quality employee. I can see all sorts of retail employees and office workers quitting their jobs to work for me. Also we take some of the servers tips and share them with the hosts and buspeople so good for them.

I also wonder about the servers who work in hoity-toity restaurants in Manhattan. These servers can make $150,000 dollars a year. How is that fair.

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Mary Paschall's avatar

Not only would retail and office workers want to quit their low wage jobs to beome tipped employees, so would all wage earners from nursing home employees to truck drivers and everyone in between. This would lead to all kinds of labor shortages across the board as everyone becomes a restaurant worker. We thought we recovered from supply chain issues but we will have created a severe labor shortage problem. This is a policy idea that will go nowhere fast.

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