Anytime I see something viral about restaurant tipping, I brace myself. Because for every great story about a waiter being tipped an insane amount by a good samaritan, there’s a terrible story about jerks who bully their server by threatening to take away money or leave a bible verse instead of a tip.
Luckily, this customer in a restaurant in Missouri was able to make their political point while still leaving money for the server. So while it’s odd, it’s also kind of… sweet?
The picture, which surfaced on Reddit, shows that the customer wrote $0 as the tip, writing in that “Taxation is theft.”
However, they did leave a cash tip of over 20% with a note saying, “This is not a tip. This is a personal gift and not subject to federal or state income taxes.” Now, the internet is exploding over the message and calling it the “Libertarian way to tip.”
Libertarians famously don’t believe in the government taking taxes. On their party’s website they say that in the United States, “all political parties other than our own grant government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.” They believe strongly that people should be able to give money to whatever or whomever they want saying, “If Americans want to give money to the government for one reason or another, they should be free to do so. If Americans prefer to spend their money on other things, then they should be free to do that also.”
Whether or not the server in question also believes that people should be able to (or in any world would) just volunteer to pay for roads and schools, they probably didn’t mind the cash tip. Most servers prefer cash specifically so that they don’t have to report it and get taxed. So while I can’t say I agree with the Libertarian way of thinking generally, I’ve been a server. And all of us who have been servers, I guess we have a little Libertarian in us after all.
