Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 5:49 am  

Cookridge_Rhino wrote:

Not true. If a hotel worker is given a tip and the worker keeps it, then the hotel has to pay 0 tax. The company only has to ensure tax is paid if the tips go into a tronc and then are distributed by the hotel.

The local hotel took this decision because workers were complaining that tip money was being used to cover the cost of breakages.

We may be talking about a different hotel, although it is close to both our locations, the one I am referring to used to pool all of their tips (in theory) so that they were shared around the departments, and breakages were never part of the equation.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:51 am  

On the matter of tips – if you want to tip staff at a hotel, do it in cash directly and don't add it onto the room bill, even when you fill in the 'gratuity' section on the chit.

Hilton Liverpool doesn't hand those tips on, according to staff there, and I suspect it's not alone in that.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:21 am  

Unless I misunderstand it, the effect of pooling tips is that the staff providing the best service are subsidising the tips for those who are not the best.
Is that not the opposite of what tipping is supposed to be for?

Better by far to pay a proper wage and stop treating staff like servants.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:44 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

Unless I misunderstand it, the effect of pooling tips is that the staff providing the best service are subsidising the tips for those who are not the best.
Is that not the opposite of what tipping is supposed to be for?

Indeed. I got the impression – and this was from, in effect, three different staff at three different times – that the Hilton Liverpool staff see none of the tips added as a gratuity on forms for adding a bill to the room.

I have tweeted at the hotel about this, but they've not responded, so I assume that as an acknowledgement that this is what happens.

El Barbudo wrote:

Better by far to pay a proper wage and stop treating staff like servants.

Quite agree.

Mind, apparently in some restaurants, staff can make a fortune in tips.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:31 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

Unless I misunderstand it, the effect of pooling tips is that the staff providing the best service are subsidising the tips for those who are not the best.
Is that not the opposite of what tipping is supposed to be for?

That would be the case in a perfect world, in reality the issue of whether a person tips or not comes down to whether that person is a "tipper" or not, the staff can give the best possible service but if the customer does not tip or it doesn't even cross their mind (we aren't like America), then they won't get one - and in the hotel that I have knowledge of the vast majority of clients DO NOT tip as a matter of course (no reflection on the hotel which has three AA stars and a 66% TripAdvisor rating - 66% being very good on that site for moaning tw*ts)

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:44 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

... 66% TripAdvisor rating - 66% being very good on that site for moaning tw*ts)

T'Other Half spotted a review there once for a cafe/restaurant that we regularly use in Paris (it's superb for people watching).

It was written by a man who had been to the upstairs restaurant with his wife and child. The child, he acknowledged in this 'review', had been standing on chairs etc, but having done nothing himself, he was appalled that one of the staff was quite "rude" about it.

Talk about a lack of self-awareness.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:51 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

Unless I misunderstand it, the effect of pooling tips is that the staff providing the best service are subsidising the tips for those who are not the best.
Is that not the opposite of what tipping is supposed to be for?

Better by far to pay a proper wage and stop treating staff like servants.

You do misunderstand, pooling tips ensures those who work just as hard back of house get a proportion of the tips.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:55 am  

Mintball wrote:

...
Quite agree.
Mind, apparently in some restaurants, staff can make a fortune in tips.

... and, in others, not.
For example, in 2008, Carluccio's were still using tips to actually top up their staff wages to the minimum wage ... and it was legal !
Whether that has now changed, either at Carluccio's or in law, I don't know, but I seriously doubt it.

Service charges ... there is no universal use of where that money goes and in many (most?) cases it is just a boost to the bill and profits ... and, as you can't go fetch your meal from the kitchen yourself, it's just a shifty Ryanair-style trick in restaurants, if you will.

All tips are supposedly taxable but it must involve guesswork on the part of HMRC to decide just how much is taken in tax.

As long as tipping persists there will be employers who exploit it.
Again, to be fair, surely it's much better and simpler to pay a proper wage.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:00 am  

El Barbudo wrote: ... and, in others, not. For example, in 2008, Carluccio's were still using tips to actually top up their staff wages to the minimum wage ... and it was legal ! Whether that has now changed, either at Carluccio's or in law, I don't know, but I seriously doubt it... It was outlawed – became law in 2009.

El Barbudo wrote: ... and, in others, not. For example, in 2008, Carluccio's were still using tips to actually top up their staff wages to the minimum wage ... and it was legal ! Whether that has now changed, either at Carluccio's or in law, I don't know, but I seriously doubt it... It was outlawed – became law in 2009.

Re: More tax dodgers targetted by HMRC : Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:11 am  

Mintball wrote:

On the matter of tips – if you want to tip staff at a hotel, do it in cash directly and don't add it onto the room bill, even when you fill in the 'gratuity' section on the chit.

Hilton Liverpool doesn't hand those tips on, according to staff there, and I suspect it's not alone in that.

I once had a huge argument with a restaurant in Chester (and was asked to leave ) for refusing to pay the "service charge" element of the bill. The bill without the service charge was £220 and they had added 12% on (£26.40) which I told them I wasn't paying. We had been served by 2 young girls who had done a good job so I gave them each £20 in cash as a tip. The restaurant owner still insisted that I had to pay his service charge on top of that, which I told him was nonsense and there is no legal obligation to pay a service charge on any bill. Restaurants trick many customers by implying that the service charge is something they are obliged to pay when there is no legal basis for it.