Former President Donald Trump touted a wide range of familiar policy ideas during his visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday, but GOP lawmakers said he especially emphasized his new plan to exempt income earned from tips from federal taxes.
“The legislative priority that President Trump spoke about most was a desire to pass a bill to have no tax on tips,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said after Mr. Trump’s morning meeting with House Republicans.
A few hours later, Mr. Trump shared with Senate Republicans the story of how he came up with his approach.
“His story — it was so much fun — [was]. about the waitress that gave him the idea to not to tax tips,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming Republican. “He got that idea when a waitress was serving him a meal and said to him, ‘You know, we just got these new rules that require us to go through a tremendous amount of record keeping to report our tips and the penalties are onerous.’”
Mr. Trump, she said, explained that his thought in the moment was, “Well why are we even taxing tips?”
“It was an indication that he just really listens to working Americans and respects their opinions,” Ms. Lummis said.
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The IRS requires workers to report their tips monthly to their employer if they total more than $20.
Mr. Trump first announced his plan to exempt tips from federal taxes during a campaign stop in Nevada on Sunday.
“It has been a point of contention for years and years and years, and you do a great job of service, you take care of people and I think it is going to be something that is really deserved,” Mr. Trump said to the crowd in Nevada, a swing state in which hospitality workers are a key voting bloc.
Republican lawmakers are beginning a much broader discussion on tax policy as they begin to craft legislation they hope to pass next year if their party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House.
A raft of individual tax breaks that Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans enacted in 2017 are set to expire at the end of next year, and they are examining which incentives to extend and other policy tweaks they may want to make to the tax code.
While Mr. Trump seemingly will want to prioritize the tipped income exemption, it’s unclear how eager GOP lawmakers will be to include that in the package.
Sen. Roger Marshall said none of the Republicans in the room for Thursday’s meeting with Mr. Trump voiced objections to the idea, but that the forum did not provide an opportunity for such a back-and-forth exchange.
“I don’t think we had a chance to oppose it,” the Kansas Republican said. “This is a typical, more of a family having a dinner as opposed to we’re debating anything. But no one jumped up and said hell no.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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