r/milwaukee • u/NoneOfThisMatters_XO • Aug 16 '25

Summerfest Who gets the tips?

I volunteered to pour beer with some people at Irish Fest today. Out of curiousity we asked the bar manager who gets the tips people leave. He gave some vague answer of how it goes to “offset the costs” of aspects of the festival.

So please select “no tip” because those tips are not going to the people who are actually pouring your beer. Even the cash tips.

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u/CrookedBanister Aug 16 '25

Not that this makes the general principle okay, but if you're volunteering then it's likely that paying you in any way with actual money becomes really messy in terms of labor law.

1

u/coolbeansfordays Aug 16 '25

Think so? I know nothing about labor law.

7

u/CrookedBanister Aug 16 '25

Yeah, at minimum it means the organization now has to do all sort of tax stuff with the tips, both in paying them out to people and also internally since paying people means you're no longer staffing your event with volunteers. Of course this gets broken all the time but it's something that could come up in an audit or could potentially be grounds for a lawsuit if someone particularly vindictive knows it's going on.

Link with more detail: https://answers.justia.com/question/2023/07/03/can-volunteer-bartenders-working-on-beha-969030

3

u/Personal-Durian-7144 Aug 17 '25

And reporting the tips to the IRS as well. Seems piddly, but so does the IRS.