An End to Tax on Tips

Plus: Lab-grown meat fears, DOJ inquiry into Cuomo, Kristi Noem's polygraphs, and more...

Passed the Senate: Yesterday, the Senate passed the No Tax on Tips Act 100–0, which "creates a federal income tax deduction of up to $25,000 a year for certain types of cash tips for eligible employees," per The Washington Post. ("Cash tips" include tips given not just in cash but also via credit and debit cards.) This applies to employees earning $160,000 or less annually.

Waiters, bartenders, delivery drivers, strippers, taxi drivers, and many others stand to benefit from this. But isn't the obvious outcome customers simply tipping less, realizing that the workers they were tipping now get to keep more of what they earn (if they were reporting it as taxable income at all in the first place)?

Other fun ideas here:

No Tax on Tips Act has passed the Senate

Want to give both you and your buddy a $25,000 deduction for the year? Both of you sign up to deliver on DoorDash, order a Starbucks latte that your friend delivers for you, and generously thank each other with a $25k tip! pic.twitter.com/lLjlSi5wtw

— Jay???? (@jayluxeed) May 20, 2025

If you actually wanted to help the household budgets of working-class people, the best thing you could do is refrain from imposing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs (and more for goods imported from China). It's not clear to me that no taxes on tips, though President Donald Trump touted it repeatedly from the campaign trail, will do all that much, or that there was a ton of accurate tip-reporting happening in the first place.

But it makes sense that Trump—always politically minded—pursued this: "Trump is right to want to get rid of taxes on tips, primarily because it's a heavy paperwork load and it generates practically no revenue," writes Jared Dillian for Reason. "Promising to get rid of it was a downright genius political move because it appealed to the 4 million workers in tipped occupations, and he was buying those votes for practically nothing." But it also creates an opportunity for people to try to categorize their normal income as tips, and how much they can now get away with remains to be seen.

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Lab-grown meat discourse: Please forgive me, it's all playing out on X, and I'll attempt a synopsis—with heavy excerpting—here, because I think discussions of lab-grown meat bans sometimes fail to convey the deeper fears present.

"RWers in red states are banning lab grown meat because it will be used as a a cudgel against them in the future," wrote an anon on X. "There is no faith that lab grown meat will be on an even playing field in the market. It will be used for Dekulakization if the opportunity presents itself." You can't ban beef cow farmers, he adds, but you could do carbon emissions offsets, mandate more humane treatment of animals raised for slaughter, or harass farmers in a bunch of other ways so that their old models are no longer economically viable. And the alternative is right there! "Lab grown meat is just *slightly* worse," he adds. "Just a tiny tiny bit. How can you assure me this isn't the food version of shutting my engine off at the red light, of making my dish washing machine/washing machine/dryer just slightly worse?"

It's true: Under the guise of environmentalism, we've been forced to accept slightly worse alternatives—paper straws, those crappy coffee-cup lids that don't actually work, paper bags in lieu of plastic, A.C. mandates (mostly in European countries) that force businesses and public buildings to be kept just a little hotter to reduce energy consumption—in blue cities and states especially. It's never too big of an imposition for people to revolt, but it makes life marginally worse.

"This is a really good thread of why people are disinclined to permit lab-grown meat," writes PoliMath. "It feels like a back door to banning real meat and people are really sick of being tricked and forced into accepting shitty things they don't want."

But this is classic conservatism, counters The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, who summarizes the PoliMath position as "I'm afraid that the emergence of new things will mean I won't be able to enjoy my old things."

"'If we allow this new thing to develop, the state will eventually ban this old thing I like, so we have to smother the infant tech in the crib' is a very very anti-progress position to take, in any field," adds Thompson. "You're basically endorsing incumbent bias as a first principle because of a make-believe fear that Democrats are on the verge of banning steak." PoliMath counters that the fear isn't make-believe, that eradicating the meat industry is the explicit, stated goal of pretty much every lab-grown meat company, and that people who seek to ban lab-grown meat aren't unreasonable to fear that wholesale replacement of the meat industry is the ultimate goal—something they'll be forced to accept for the greater good.

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Scenes from New York: The Justice Department, having closed its inquiry into Mayor Eric Adams' possible corruption, has opened an inquiry into Adams' mayoral race opponent (and current frontrunner), Andrew Cuomo, for his handling of COVID as governor. Some people are criticizing this as "election interference," but it's worth asking: Do we actually have any indication that this hurts Cuomo's chances with likely voters? (Or that it's even considered relevant at all?)

All this aside, the mayoral field is mighty weak this time around. It's like we get the honor of picking between bad, big government, corrupt mayor No. 1, bad, big government, corrupt mayor No. 2, or a legit socialist who wants government-run grocery stores. I'll sit this one out, thanks.

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QUICK HITS

• "I don't think Thomas Massie understands government," said President Donald Trump to reporters, calling himself a fiscal hawk. "I think he's a grandstander, frankly. He'll probably vote [no]—we don't even talk to him much. I think he should be voted out of office. And I just don't think he understands government. If you ask him a couple of questions, he'll never give you an answer, he just says 'I'm a no.'" This is an amusing take on Massie because—of all the politicians we've interviewed on Just Asking Questions—Massie has, in my experience, been the most likely to actually give in-depth reasoning for his no votes.
• Maricopa County taxpayers are still paying for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration crackdown, eight years after he left office.
• Polygraphs don't really work, so why is Homeland Security head Kristi Noem using them?

Kristi Noem is hooking up her employees to polygraph machines to try and find out if they're leaking to the press, per the WSJ pic.twitter.com/NExGaKanRO

— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 21, 2025

• Tim Walz says, "We had the most qualified person who'd run for president in this country's history at the top of the ticket."

The Rehearsal: Kamala Harris used aides as actors in a "mock soiree" to practice mingling authentically. pic.twitter.com/vQsDYNy5yB

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesUSA) May 20, 2025

• This is the way:

Taiwanese Parliament member reportedly stole a bill and ran away with it to stop it from being passed pic.twitter.com/k0AdwK6x7g

— ໊ (@eternitygoon) May 19, 2025