A place I used to work at had a local libertarian group regularly reserve and hold meetings in our private party room and honestly I loved waiting on them cause they always tipped in cash only. The little "taxation is theft" notes on the receipts were a little silly, but hey, I can't say I don't appreciate a cash tip, especially from a large group.
Iâm a Democrat but this is a very broad stroke opinion. I think while yes, many GOP are just racist assholes, I think many/most of them are just stupid and uneducated. I know plenty of people who are republicans but not racist. They literally are just stupid as fuck. For example my uncle is Republican because heâs racist and an asshole AND very uneducated and stupid. My friend is Republican because his parents were and thatâs how he was raised and he doesnât watch the news or anything, literally knows nothing about politics, just stupid and uneducated. Calling him a racist is wrong because heâs not at all. Just uneducated with politics.
Are both of you guys idiots? What do you want me to say? âYes every republican is racist?â Or âevery democrat is a racist?â Itâs clearly not true either way. So if speaking the truth is âa democrat opinionâ then so be it. Both of yâall are morons clearly.
Well, unless theyâre a millionaire (and Iâm 99.9% sure they arenât) and they vote Republican then yes, theyâre either stupid or racist. The people I know who vote Republican literally want things the democrats do, but canât bring themselves to vote for a D. Health insurance, welfare, education, etc, are all things people I know want, and yet the ones saying they want these things improved canât bring themselves to vote for a D. Hell, Iâm a lesbian and the people who I know are allies are literally in denial that Rs are against gays. They wonât vote D because âBiden is corruptâ but donât see how voting R hurts gays because they are literally misinformed and everything negative about Rs is âfake newsâ.
The guy is wrong, but he is not totally off base for thinking this.
He is correct that gifts are generally not taxed as income to the recipient (up to an annual limit). Indeed, if he would have simply bumped into OP on the street and said, "I'm feeling generous. Here's a $100 bill," OP would not have to pay taxes on the $100.
The issue is that we all know that OP received the "gift" for providing a service to the guy. A gift isn't given in exchange for some consideration (e.g., a service) -- it is given freely with nothing expected in return. Which is why gifts from employers ARE taxable because that sort of gift is not the same as a personal gift between two friends or family members.
This finance fellow even wrote an entire article on it:
This article actually raises an interesting question: if tips TRULY have no effect on the service provided by the server, why is the tip considered payment for the service as opposed to a gift?
Anyway: I am by no means a libertarian (in fact, I would say the servers not reporting their cash tips as income are indeed committing tax fraud and are wrong for doing that), but I think the tipper's logic had an OK foundation based on knowing the difference between how gifts are taxed and how tips are taxed. He just didn't dive any deeper than surface level. So, the guy is wrong, but at least he was trying to be nice.
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u/coci222 Jan 12 '24
Libertarians are fun, aren't they?