Miami employment attorney Jason D. Berkowitz of BT Law Group, PLLC, addresses the federal and state laws governing tip ownership, tip credits, and pooling arrangements for tipped workers in South Florida.
Tip Ownership and Credits
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 amended the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to explicitly prohibit employers from keeping any portion of tips received by their employees. This prohibition applies regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit, and it extends to managers and supervisors, who are equally barred from retaining employee gratuities under current Department of Labor guidance.
Florida’s tip credit framework imposes specific wage obligations on employers of tipped workers. Under current state law, employers may pay tipped employees a direct cash wage of $10.98 per hour, with tips expected to cover the remaining $3.02 to meet Florida’s minimum wage of $14.00 per hour.
Tip Pooling Arrangements
Tip pooling arrangements carry their own legal requirements, which depend on whether the employer takes a tip credit. When a tip credit applies, pools may only include employees who customarily and regularly receive gratuities, such as servers, bartenders, bussers, and food runners, and cannot extend to back-of-house staff like cooks or dishwashers.
Employers also cannot retain any portion of a tip pool for the business itself. A 2025 Florida amendment to section 509.214 of the Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2026, will require public food service establishments to separately disclose operations charges on customer receipts and show distinct line items for gratuity, operations charges, and sales tax, providing greater transparency for both workers and customers.
Remedies for Tipped Workers
Tipped workers in South Florida have several avenues for relief. Complaints may be filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which handles wage investigations throughout the region. The Miami-Dade County Wage Theft Program provides an administrative remedy for claims between $60 and $15,000, with potential recovery of up to three times the wages owed under the county’s Wage Theft Ordinance.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
