The Senate has just passed by unanimous vote a bill providing a $25,000 deduction for tips. This legislation will: do nothing for genuinely poor service workers, whose income is already lower than the standard deduction; create confusion as to which occupations are eligible; create an unwarranted distinction between the incomes of service employees and poorly paid workers in other occupations; increase the deficit, to the extent the beneficiaries of the deduction were actually paying taxes; increase the pressure on customers to tip, which is already out of control; encourage owners of service businesses to cut wages of tipped employees; and generate strife between tipped and untipped employees in service businesses.
It just goes to show that legislation which is bipartisan can be stupid and opportunistic, too.