When you compare it with other services we pay for in the United States, the culture we've built around tipping starts to look very strange.

Let's just take restaurants where staffers wait on you at your table. At the end of your

meal, you calculate, say, 20% of the total cost of the food itself and add that on for your server.

Technically, this is entirely optional. But in restaurants that offer the federal minimum wage

for tipped employees, your server's base pay is $2.13 an hour, which makes not tipping a little

like paying for a gallon of paint and some brushes and expecting the painter you've hired to do

your walls for nothing, or not nothing, but $2.13 an hour. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris

Boyd. For many workers, gratuities are not some bonus gift, but an essential component of their income,

which ironically plays into the fact that more support for the section of the One Big

Beautiful Bill Act that eliminated tax on tips through 2028 came from the National

Restaurant Association and industry lobby, then from

workers' groups. It sounds counterintuitive, right? Ayal Press is here to explain. He's been

investigating this for The New Yorker, where he is a contributing writer. His article on the

subject is called Check Your Bill. Ayal, welcome to think. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. So there's been

bipartisan interest in ending income taxes on tips. President Trump proposed it in the last

election cycle, but Kamala Harris endorsed a version of the same policy. It's easy to understand

the appeal to tipped workers. Why has this not been a serious consideration in the past?

I think it hasn't been a consideration because tip workers have kind of been politically invisible.

And, you know, whatever one makes of Trump's proposal to end taxes on tips, and in my article,

I cast considerable skepticism on it, talking to economists.

But the fact of the matter is he recognized an opportunity.

And he announced it in Las Vegas.

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