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About Tipping
Tip, total and the split between people.
The Fair Labor Standards Act allows a sub-minimum cash wage for tipped employees provided tips bring them up to the federal minimum, and several states have abolished that allowance. An automatic service charge on a larger party is not a tip, and employers distribute it under their own rules.
Tipping is unusual among American costs in being socially set rather than posted: 15-20% at table service, a dollar or two a drink at a bar, 15% for delivery. Since tipped employees may legally be paid a lower base wage, the tip is part of the wage rather than a bonus.
Tipping in the United States is expected rather than optional: 15-20% at table service is the customary range, calculated on the pre-tax total, and it forms a real part of server income because tipped employees may legally be paid a lower base wage. Sales tax on the meal is added separately from the tip.
A 20% tip on a $40 bill is $8 — worth knowing before the card terminal offers three suggested amounts, all calculated after tax.
The tip supplements a wage in most American states, which is why the customary percentage matters to the person serving and not only to the bill. Counter service, delivery and table service carry different expectations, and a posted service charge is not a tip.
Tip Calculator sits with the rest of the library's everyday work, and it rests on the same service-tipping arithmetic the way a manufacturer's label or a timetable does. Its answer is only as good as the assumptions standing behind it.
The quantities it works from — bill amount, tip, people and tax already included — are the ones a real service-tipping question actually turns on, and each carries a convention of its own, set out below.
Everyday arithmetic in the United States carries conventions that are easy to miss: dates run month before day, distances and weights follow customary units, and prices are quoted before tax. Those conventions make a surprising share of daily sums come out differently from the same question asked elsewhere.
The figures in this section follow American practice unless the subject itself is international.