Workers’ Compensation for Tipped Employees

Different types of workers rely on tips for the majority of their income, including servers, bartenders, busing staff, and many other professions. All employees, no matter how many tips they get, are entitled to receive workers’ compensation if they are injured while on the job. While medical expenses are paid out to a certain amount depending on the injury, lost wages are dispensed based on the employee’s salary. How then would such compensation be given for tipped employees?

It would be unfair to base workers’ compensation based on a tipped employee’s static salary, as this is usually a very minimal amount. The law, in this case, is set up to accommodate tipped employees and there is a precedent for such workers to be able to receive compensation up to the amount of money that they would be projected to have been tipped if they were working.

On the other hand, it can be difficult to predict what kind of tips that employee would receive if he or she was working, as this is dependent on the amount and generosity of patrons. To make the process much simpler, many courts of law look to how much tip money was declared on the previous year’s taxes. The amount the employee would be out of work is then scaled to this amount. If the employee was new to the job or didn’t declare tip money on the previous year’s taxes, it becomes much more difficult to make this calculation and therefore jeopardizes this portion of the compensation claim.

No matter the situation, you as a tipped employee are entitled to financial compensation for injuries sustained on the job and lost wages that came as a result. To give yourself the best chance of winning the maximum amount, it is important to have an attorney on your side who will fight for and with you. To learn about how we at the Franco Law Firm can serve you in this way and to schedule a free consultation today, please call us at (813) 872-0929.