RTP-area local music and culture

[John Iwaniszek <not AT hotmail.com>]

Chris Calloway wrote:

> --- Matt <matt.kalb AT gmail.com> wrote:
>> Say it ain't so.
> 
> Depends totally on the restaurant.
> 
> Visa/Mastercard charge 2.5 percent on sales, American
> Express charges 4 percent (hence, fewer places are
> going to do business with Amex). There is a sliding
> scale based on total sales where those percentages go
> down based on the merchant's credit rating and amount
> of sales. But basically that amount need to be
> somewhere on the order of a major department store
> before the scale starts to slide. A business like
> Amazon or other catalog sales pay very virtually no
> card fees as they generate huge potentials for
> revolving interest charges.
> 
> Whether a restaurant passes that charge along to
> waits' tips is a matter or the individual restaurant.
> Some restaurants make their waits pool all their tips
> (been there), or make the waits "tip out" the kitchen
> staff a percentage of total tips (been there, too).
> You aren't likely to know what's going on at any
> particular place. And any of these schemes are onerous
> to the waits because the feds force a percentage of
> sales to be deducted from waits' paychecks as a matter
> of collecting income tax on *presumed tips* (been
> there). See, if you don't leave a tip, the wait
> actually *pays* to wait on you, because they are
> liable for taxes on presumed tips.

Thank you, Nancy Reagan.  Bitch.