Tipping out may get around rules prohibiting deduction of wages but may still lead to employer liability
“Tipping out” — the pooling and sharing of a portion of gratuities — is a common practice among restaurants and bars. Calculated either as a percentage of tips received by a server or of overall corporate sales for a period of time, pooled gratuities have traditionally been shared among servers, bussers, chefs and other restaurant staff. Increasingly, however, the “house”’ (the restaurant or bar itself) has begun to take piece of the action, ostensibly to recuperate for breakage costs or monetary errors.
