In a recent campaign ad, former President Donald Trump alleged that Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden have used the IRS to target workers who receive tips. The ad claims Harris has “unleashed” the IRS to confiscate tip money from service workers, a dramatic accusation designed to stir up fear. However, as reported by The Washington Post, these claims are completely unfounded.
Trump’s ad, which has garnered 8 million views on X in just 48 hours, suggests that Harris’s support for taxing service workers’ tips involves a sinister plot to use the IRS against them. The ad uses dramatic imagery of IRS agents raiding homes to imply an aggressive crackdown on tip income, as Trump claims, “Don’t let Kamala Harris fool you. Not only does Harris support taxing service workers’ tips, news reports confirm Biden and Harris have weaponized the IRS to confiscate your tip money. Biden and Harris have literally unleashed the IRS to harass workers who receive tips.”
Contrary to these allegations, Kamala Harris’s actual proposal, unveiled earlier this month, focuses on capping earnings from tips and ensuring Social Security and Medicare taxes are still collected. This is in response to Trump’s own proposal on eliminating taxes on tips, which he announced in June. Harris’s plan, however, includes more specifics and aims to prevent abuse of the tax system by upper-income workers.
The Washington Post highlights that the Trump campaign’s ad misrepresents both the nature and the status of the IRS’s actions.
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The ad references an IRS proposal from February 2023, seeking comments on a plan to consolidate three voluntary tip reporting programs into one, known as the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA). This proposal aimed to simplify tip reporting and was intended to reduce the need for audits by leveraging modern payment technologies. However, SITCA has been shelved, and no new reporting or compliance measures are currently planned.
Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, noted that the goal of SITCA was to streamline the reporting process, not to increase audits. The proposal was voluntary and was designed to minimize the burden on both workers and employers.
Additionally, the ad’s claim that the IRS has been mobilized to target tipped workers is false. The Trump campaign’s ad misrepresents IRS activities and fails to provide accurate information about the current status of tip reporting regulations.
The Washington Post confirms that the Trump campaign’s accusations are false. The portrayal of Harris and Biden as orchestrating a crackdown on tip income is a fabrication, with the ad’s dramatic claims not reflecting the reality of IRS operations or policy proposals. For these reasons, the ad earns Four Pinocchios for its misleading and inaccurate content.
