$2.13 Is the Tipping Point -- America's Food Servers Are Grossly Underpaid

[Ms. Toad]

33. I know the financial reality -

athough not personally. Through friends and family members. There are some who make bundles (realtively speaking) and many of those who do don't report it. But making bundles is dependent on a lot of things beyond your control, including having a boss who plays fair and doesn't insist you report tips you don't make, doesn't assign you only the AM or graveyard shift, working in a place which attracts people who have enough money to tip and enough social conscious to actually use their money in that way.

The only group of people who made me edgier at tax time were the people who had been paid as independent contractors, but who were really employees who should have had taxes withheld. They thought they'd had generous wages until I told them they had to pay ~15.3% of the money they no longer had for social security,and another 15% (generally) for a variety of local, state, and federal taxes.