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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed a revenue procedure this week to crack down on the service industry's reporting of tips. The Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA) program would be a voluntary tip reporting system in which the IRS and service industry companies cooperate, according to the announcement Monday. As part of the proposal, the IRS will give the public until early May to provide feedback on the program before implementing it. "Those 87,000 new IRS agents that you were promised would only target the rich," tweeted Mike Palicz, federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform. "They're coming...

The big idea When Black diners get poorer service from wait staff and bartenders than white customers, it’s more likely because of racial bias than the well-documented fact that they tip less, according to a new survey I recently published. To reach that conclusion, my colleague Gerald Nowak and I recruited over 700 mostly white full-service restaurant servers and bartenders to review a hypothetical dining scenario that randomly involved either white or Black customers. We then asked them to predict the tip that the table would leave, the likelihood that the table would exhibit undesirable dining behaviors and the quality...

Call it payback for the December restaurant shutdowns.It took a few minutes after the BLS reported the impressive February jobs report, which showed a whopping 379K total jobs added in February (and 465K private payrolls, or more than double the 195K expected), for traders to read between the lines and realize that there was much less than meets the eye in the latest jobs report.To wit: of the 379K jobs, a whopping 355K, or 93%, were in leisure and hospitality, and within this category the one and only sector that truly boomed the most under the Obama admin was on...

A California lawmaker has introduced a new bill that would make it illegal to distribute single-use straws to consumers at restaurants unless specifically requested. Ian Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, brought forth Assembly Bill 1884, citing environmental protection as a reason to discourage the use of “single use straws,” typically distributed with soft drinks, smoothies, and coffee, which are then disposed of after being used. “We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans,” Calderon stated in a media release. “AB 1884...

Ian Calderon wants restaurateurs to think long and hard before giving you a straw. Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California's lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon's law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. "We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans," Calderon explained in a...

As another month passes, the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, also known as waiters and bartenders. In October, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by "food services and drinking places" rose by another 10,000, the US workforce lost another 9,000 manufacturing workers.

On the surface, the March jobs reported was better than expected... except for manufacturing workers. As shown in the chart below, in the past month, a disturbing 29,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. This was the single biggest monthly drop in the series going back to December 2009.  But not all is lost: as has been the case for virtually every month during the "recovery", virtually every laid off manufacturing worker could find a job as a waiter: in March, the workers in the "Food services and drinking places" category, aka waiters, bartenders and minimum wage line cooks, rose again...

Here is one of the reasons why the Fed is confident the US economy is strong and resilient enough to sustain a rate hike: since January, the US has added 293,900 waiter & bartender positions and zero manufacturing workers.Unless one is an economist, no further commentary is needed. If one is an economist, we eagerly look forward to an extended discussion why one should focus only on the blue line and ignore the red one, debate the adverse impacts of the weather (both hot and cold) on manufacturing, listen to how the collapse of high-paying jobs is actually a...

Dion Waiters informs Northeast Ohio Media Group that he is a Muslim and plans to skip national anthems • Update: Dion Waiters clarifies remarks about his pregame ritual, will be there for anthems DENVER, Colo. – Prior to the Cavaliers getting set to take on the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, one of their players was missing from the pregame opening events. Dion Waiters was nowhere to be found when the national anthem was being sung. He was absent when the starting lineups were introduced. It was the first game of the season that he was coming off the bench. He...

UPDATE: There has been a Twitter denial (from Waiters), which is strange because the original story used a direct quote: Cleveland Cavaliers guard Dion Waiters told Cleveland.com he recently informed Cavs ownership that he is Muslim and that he will abstain from joining his team during the national anthem, doing so Wednesday night in Utah -- though Waiters did stand with the Cavs during Friday's anthem at Denver. On Wednesday, the first game Waiters was coming off the bench for Cleveland, he was not on the floor during the anthem or when the starters were introduced. Waiters told the Northeast...

(Newser) – Many waiters are still waiting for their minimum wage to rise—which it hasn't in more than two decades. The federal minimum for servers is set at $2.13 an hour, though if they don't make at least the regular minimum of $7.25 when tips are added in, employers are supposed to make up the difference. That doesn't always happen, a waitress tells Bloomberg. She saw her wages plummet when she moved from California, which has a state minimum of $6.75, to New Mexico, which is one of 13 states to use the federal minimum. President Obama has called for...

Are you tipping enough when you go out to eat? The San Francisco restaurant industry apparently doesn’t think so. A column from Ed Arnow of the Contra Costa Times reports that “there’s a move on” among local restaurant workers to “make 25% the standard tip in San Francisco.” Arnow says that several “high-class restaurants” have signed on to the idea, though he doesn’t list which ones—or, for that matter, how the restaurants would impose this new standard.

Every Tuesday I go to Murphy's Taproom in Manchester to hang out with a bunch of liberty-oriented people. This is a famous event among Free-staters. About 40-60 people gather weekly for about 4 hours and eat and drink and are merry. I'm no longer allowed to go there, because I don't tip. I've written some of my thoughts about tipping in the past, and have since fleshed out my position in my mind, so I won't focus here on the reasons to tip or not to tip. Here, I want to merely explain what happened tonight. About 6 weeks ago,...

Most parents have experienced their young children getting restless when waiting for a meal in a restaurant. But not many get the bill at the end of it with a message describing their offspring as a 'little f*****'. This is what happened to parents Craig and Kimberley Cartin at a Mexican restaurant in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where they received the receipt which had 'Thanky you littell f*****' written on it. ... Fuming Craig, a 34-year-old administrator, said: 'I couldn't believe my eyes. The meal was indifferent anyway but to be abused on the bill is unbelievably offensive. 'I consider myself...

Most parents have experienced their young children getting restless when waiting for a meal in a restaurant. But not many get the bill at the end of it with a message describing their offspring as a 'little f*****'. This is what happened to parents Craig and Kimberley Cartin at a Mexican restaurant in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where they received the receipt which had 'Thankyyou littell f*****' written on it. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212583/Family-horrified-getting-restaurant-describing-year-old-daughter-little-f--er.html#ixzz0QoIAO8Vk

JEDDAH – No job is demeaning and all professions, however considered lowly, must be respected. This was the message Minister of Labor, Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, delivered when he donned the uniform of a waiter and carried out orders from the catering department’s head. He also kissed the head of a Saudi waiter at one of Jeddah’s restaurants in an expression of admiration for the man who caters to the food needs of many customers on a daily basis oblivious of the stigma and the negativity attached to the profession. The minister was patronizing the first Saudi Hospitality Day organized by...

Posh N.Y. eatery alleges insubordination, drinking on the jobThree former waiters at New York’s posh 21 Club, where a hamburger costs $30, have filed a $5 million discrimination lawsuit saying they were fired for being French. In a civil suit made public on Monday at Manhattan Supreme Court, the three men, Rene Bordet, 68, Jean Claude Lesbre, 63 and Yves Thepault, 68, said the restaurant’s management falsely accused them of drinking wine on the job and “created and fostered an environment rife with anti-French sentiment.” Both Bordet and Lesbre worked for 10 years as waiters and floor captains before being...

Ex-curry waiter's Sept 11 tip-off thought 'too fantastic' By Oliver Poole (Filed: 05/06/2004) The failure of the British and American security services to act on leads that might have helped prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks is starkly exposed by their investigation of Niaz Khan. Eighteen months before the attack on the Twin Towers the former curry waiter from Burnley entered an FBI office in New Jersey and told startled agents he had been trained to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. His tale of al-Qa'eda training camps equipped with mock Boeing aircraft was carefully noted by...

Restaurant staff are taking unsavoury revenge on celebrities who fail to tip generously. NICK FOULKES reports. A Dubliner who worked as a waiter in New York tells the story of the time Tony Bennett came to eat. The restaurant's manager told a waitress to forget about her other tables and look after the singer's every need. But what about my tips, she complained. I'm sure Mr Bennett will look after you, the manager reassured her. One meal and lots of attentive service later, the singer put down his tip. It fell short of the waitress's expectations. As the waiter was...