> It was always very interesting to me how the
> tips sorted out. The waiter doesn't take home
> all that you leave him/her. The bussers gets
> 15-20%, the bartenders get some random
> amount, unless there was a tip on alchohol
> sales, then they get a hefty 50% of the tip from
> that. All tips are supposed to be reported and
> recorded each day, so that they can be
> reported on taxes.
>
>
> Tess


Ah. And therein lies the dig. Since there is no accurate way to account for tips in figuring income taxes, waitpersons were, when I was doing it, taxed on 8% of their individual sales, whether they made and got to keep 8% or not. This was based, at the time, on a presumed 10% of the sale tip, with ten percent of that going to a pool for each the bartending staff and the busboys. The minute someone left less than 10%, I lost money, because not only did I have to give out 2% of my actual sales, whether I had it or not, but I was taxed on that money I never made. Even further to that, the restaurant's total sales were taken into consideration; if the taxable tips claimed by the whole staff were less than 8% of the restaurant's sales, the difference was allocated by some formula to the individual servers as taxable income. What a racket.

Mou"and I don't mean loud"sie