The “No Tax on Tips” Slip

I regret to reckon that President Trump, for his latest fracas, is most deserving of impeachment. Thrice time’s the charm for removal.

The President has met the threshold for congressional deposition not for a litany of abuses, including illegal indefinite extension of the TikTok ban, his erratic tariff indices that force Walmart clerks to furiously swap out price tags, or his memecoin nest-feathering. Those are but small beer compared to a gross offense not only to America, but to humanity as a God-gifted species.

Trump’s much-touted “no tax on tips” policy was born first a gimmick to arouse seal claps on the hustings. Now it’s actually becoming real U.S. Code, with requisite sectional typography and Excel-like tabling that give tax accountants a real crease in their khakis.

Congress, in its infinite estivation, passed the tip-tax-cut as part of the mammoth package, the One Big Beautiful Deficit Buster Act, only to accede all authority on determining which hole-filling drudgeries can deduct extra earnings owed to the U.S. Treasury. The law was over eleven hundred pages long—not room enough, apparently, to bullet out a few dozen industries.

Axios acquired a preliminary list of qualifying vocations, the comp sheet likely left in the tray of the printer outside Scott Bessent’s office. Within the accretive occupations is a craft so vile, so perverse, so aberrant, so offensive to good taste, so inimical to proper decorum, so profane in the eyes of the Lord, that it dishonors the entire country to not only treat it as a legitimate profession, but, even worse, to force the taxman to leave it unmolested.

“Social media influencers” have been gifted a remit from the IRS, and will no longer have to report the microtransactions they receive for playing prostitute before the oculus portal of their iPhone camera. The like-monger is too precious a factotum. The skins livestreamers peel off their zonked viewers have no business in the government’s coffers. The salaries of doctors, teachers, road pavers, accountants, rocket scientists? Their paychecks get the t-man trim. Priorities!

In principle, keeping currency out of Uncle Sam’s burning pocket is good, both in the deontological and utilitarian sense. But to incentivize the attention economy? To reward Twitch streamers who knife Grand Theft Auto vamps for a couple of doubloons from basement-dwellers? To give the OnlyFans striptease a break because she dropped out of college and doesn’t feel like operating the fryer at McDonald’s?

This damn country once harnessed the greatest minds, talents, and raw resources to put a living man on the moon. Now we’re giving NoObOwNeR666 a modest notch off his cess tally. What’s next? An extra write-off for the aged aged man a-sitting on the gate? Oh, wait.

If my crank on influencers seems a bitty concern, consider the more insidious motivation for “no tax on tips.” Yes, the neoliberals have it right: granting waggies some relief every April 15th is an economic boon. Heaven knows the kind of entitled wretches working barmen, caddies, waiters, and baristas must tangle with day after day.

The slipping of a few Washingtons was, heretofore, purely supplemental to base pay. Gratuity was on top of the established wage, a dollop of sweet cream as a reward for exemplary service. The extra dinero curled off the customer’s money roll wasn’t supposed to be, after months of careful calculation, tallied on yet another section of the 1040 Form. “No tax on tips” was de facto policy because piles of crumbled bills never made it onto the IRS ledger. (Exceptions for tip-dependent posts like waiters notwithstanding.)

Why tout snipping taxes on income that was already off the books, besides the easy optics of a working-class sop? More buffered perception! Nudging low-skill hands like busboys, ushers, cashiers, and *ick* content creators into reporting their tipped takings gives the impression of a richer country. Gross domestic product goes up, BLS papers show greater collective wealth, and the line, that beautiful imaginary line Wall Street traders base our entire capital-distribution system on, lurches skyward.

To put it in terms that will really get the President’s ego-libido going: line go up, Line Go Up, LINE GO UP!

Meanwhile, yet another aspect of unaccounted life is to be logged somewhere on the great public fisc, summed and stored for an undefinable purpose other than bureaucrats being able to claim a “file” exists.

The march toward the cashless, surveillance society that would make bureaucrats drool if their insides weren’t so coldly arid continues apace. So go on, meek toilers. Document that ball of crunched notes so you receive the same tax bill you would have gotten anyway if you stowed the looseleafs in your underwear drawer.

As for you influencers, keep shimmying for shekels, taxless and shameless.