Tip Calculator

The customary tip at a US sit-down restaurant has drifted upward over the decades — from roughly 10% in the mid-20th century, to 15% becoming the widely cited norm by the 1980s and 90s, to 18–20% now commonly presented as the default on receipts and payment terminals. Several forces get blamed for this: stagnant base wages for tipped workers in many US states, which shift a larger share of income onto tips; payment terminals that suggest percentages (often starting at 18% or higher) rather than leaving the amount to the customer's judgment, which nudges behaviour upward; and a general social expectation that under-tipping reads as a judgment on service quality even when it is not intended that way. None of this makes any particular percentage "correct" — it is a social convention that has moved, and continues to move, rather than a fixed rule.

Sales tax is calculated on the goods and service purchased, not on the service the server personally provided, which is the core argument for tipping on the pre-tax subtotal: the tip is meant to reward the person, and the tax has nothing to do with them. The counter-argument is practical rather than principled — most people do not want to do a subtraction before a percentage calculation at the end of a meal, and the difference in absolute terms is usually small, so tipping on the final total (the number actually printed at the bottom of the receipt) has become the more common habit simply because it is easier. Some etiquette guides explicitly endorse the pre-tax method as the more "correct" one; in practice, plenty of people have never made the distinction at all. Neither convention is universally enforced, so this calculator accepts whichever figure you enter as "the bill" and applies the tip percentage to it directly — you decide whether that figure is the subtotal or the total.