Dem Rep. Jamie Raskin Refuses to Answer if He Supports No Tax on Tips

HUNT: “I was asking you about no taxes on tips, which is part of this bill, for working people who work on a tipped wage. Do you support that?”

RASKIN: “You know, I haven’t looked seriously at it because I haven’t thought they were serious about it. You know, tips are income. And I would prefer just to have a much more progressive income tax, so people who are making a lot of money are paying more, much more like happened under very conservative presidents like Nixon or Eisenhower, than to give people the kind of symbolic consolation prize of saying we’re not going to tax tips. I mean, tips are income. I suppose that it’s difficult to record them and to keep track of them. So, I’m not necessarily opposed to it, but I think that it’s a major distraction from what’s really going on, which is that the GOP has destroyed the idea of progressive income taxation in America, which is, the more money you make, the more you should pay because you get to draw more resources from society.”