Guide · Tipping
Does your tip actually reach the worker?
By federal law it cannot be kept by the owner, a manager or a supervisor — the rules say so in almost those words. What you cannot see from the counter is whether your tip is topping up a wage or replacing one.
The short answer
Yes — the money is the employee’s, and the regulation is unusually blunt about who may not touch it. What varies, invisibly, is what the tip is doing: at one business it sits on top of a full wage, and at the one next door it is filling a gap the employer is legally allowed to leave. You cannot tell which from where you are standing, and this guide is mostly about why that is not your problem to solve at the register.house judgment
Whose money it is
29 CFR § 531.52 defines a tip and then closes two doors:sourced
“An employer may not keep tips received by its employees for any purposes, regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit.”
“An employer may not allow managers and supervisors to keep any portion of an employee’s tips, regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit.”
The same section contains the sentence this site keeps coming back to: “Whether a tip is to be given, and its amount, are matters determined solely by the customer.” Not by a default button, and not by the person who spun the screen round.
The thing you cannot see: the tip credit
Federal law lets an employer count tips toward the minimum wage. The direct cash wage can be as low as $2.13 an hour, with the tip credit making up the difference — 29 CFR § 531.59 puts the maximum credit at the “minimum wage required by section 6(a)(1) of the Act minus cash wage paid (at least $2.13).”sourced
An employer taking that credit must have told its tipped employees in advance — “an employer is not eligible to take the tip credit unless it has informed its tipped employees in advance” — but nobody has to tell you. Two counters on the same street can run entirely different arrangements and look identical from the customer’s side.
Who is allowed into the pool
The tip credit is also what decides who may share your tip. § 531.54 splits it in two:sourced
- If the employer takes a tip credit, it may require pooling “only if it is limited to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips” — the front of house.
- If the employer pays the full minimum wageand takes no credit, it “may impose a tip pooling arrangement that includes dishwashers, cooks, or other employees.”
- Either way: “An employer may not receive tips from such a tip pool and may not allow managers and supervisors to receive tips from the tip pool.”
That second bullet is the useful one to know. A kitchen sharing in the tips is not a sign that something is being taken from your server — under federal rules it is only permitted at a business paying full wages before tips.
What this should change about your tip
Honestly: nothing at the counter. You cannot audit a payroll arrangement while somebody waits for you to press a button, and tipping less on a guess punishes the only person in the building who had no say in it.house judgment
What it does settle is the argument the screen is implicitly making. A highlighted 20 / 25 / 30 is a suggestion by the business, on a matter the federal definition assigns to you alone. Knowing that is what makes it possible to pick a number calmly instead of picking whichever one stops the moment fastest — which is what the tip screen calculator exists to do before you are standing there.
What the screen is asking versus what is owed.
The tip screen calculator prices each thing you actually did against what Emily Post publishes for it — including the rows where the published answer is a plain zero — then puts the screen’s ask beside it and prints the difference.
Compare the two →Sources
- 29 CFR § 531.52 — General characteristics of tips — the definition of a tip, the bar on employers, managers and supervisors keeping tips, and “determined solely by the customer.”
- 29 CFR § 531.54 — Tip pooling — who may be required into a tip pool, with and without a tip credit.
- 29 CFR § 531.59 — The tip wage credit — the $2.13 cash wage, the maximum credit, and the advance-notice condition.
Informational only. Everything quoted here is the federal floor under the Fair Labor Standards Act. State law can be stricter, and where it is, the stricter rule governs — so these figures are the least an employer must do, not a description of your state. This is not legal or employment advice. Last reviewed: August 2026.
More on how KindHow separates a source from a house call: the published methodology. Every guide is listed on the guides index.