Former President Donald Trump touted his proposal to remove taxes on tipped wages while repeating his typical freewheeling campaign messaging and attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Friday.
The event — held at the Il Toro E La Capra restaurant — marked Trump’s fourth appearance in Las Vegas this year and first since Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket last month, upending the presidential race and prompting a surge of Democratic enthusiasm.
Trump had led in Nevada polls all year before the Democrats replaced President Joe Biden with Harris, and his campaign had considered Nevada a foregone conclusion, but polls have since shown a virtual tie. The former president — who criss-crossed battleground states across the nation this week during the Democratic National Convention — appeared unconcerned about the state of the race in Nevada, saying “I don’t know how we can lose it.”
In his 30 minutes of remarks before a group of about 50 invited guests (with hundreds of supporters gathering at a lower level of the restaurant), Trump championed the economy while he was president, pledged to not tax Social Security benefits and made a direct pitch to members of the Culinary Union, the labor organization that represents about 60,000 Nevada hospitality workers and has endorsed Harris.
“Can we get the Culinary Union to maybe vote for Trump?” the former president said to cheers from the crowd. “Because they’re great people. They always have a head [who’s] a Democrat … even if the Republican [is] better — and a lot of the Republicans aren’t better — but I’m a lot better, and I’m the one that got this thing done.”
Despite the polling lead, Trump’s campaign has long trailed Democrats’ in staffing and physical infrastructure, but is expanding its presence in Nevada. A campaign spokesperson said the Trump campaign has five offices in the state (central Las Vegas, Spring Valley, Henderson, Centennial Hills and Reno) and is partnering with the Republican National Committee on “Trump Force 47” to match volunteers with local organizations and campaign activities. The Harris campaign has 14 offices throughout the state.
No tax on tips
Trump first floated ending taxation on tips at a Las Vegas rally in mid-June, saying a waiter at his property on the Strip gave him the idea.
Nevada politicians also rushed to embrace it. Sam Brown, the Republican candidate for Senate, said Trump had “scooped” his idea. The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — while calling Trump an unserious messenger attempting to curry favor with voters — endorsed a congressional proposal championed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to deduct their federal income tax for tipped wages. Nevada Democrats, including Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), signed on as well in mid-July.
Trump — mispronouncing Harris’ first name repeatedly — said Harris was unserious about the proposal.
“She’s a copycat,” Trump said. “She’s a flip-flopper. She’s the greatest flip-flopper in history. She went from communism to capitalism in about two weeks.”
That sentiment was echoed among attendees.
Krista Logue, a 45-year-old Starbucks barista, emphasized that “Trump proposed it first.” She believes the extra money from the tax cut would go a long way for her and her husband, who also works in the service industry and mainly relies on tips — especially now that the couple has a child.
Logue found Harris’ embrace of the proposal a bit opportunistic, but still appreciated that the idea was gaining traction.
“When he was president before we had a good economy,” she said. “Everything was going really well, and now we struggle.”
The electoral implications of the policy proposal are enormous in Nevada, which has the highest percentage of tipped workers of all states, let alone political battlegrounds. Trump released a new ad Friday— “Here’s A Tip” — attacking Harris for “weaponizing the IRS to confiscate your tip money.”
The ad language is disingenuous, referring to an early 2023 IRS proposal that would allow employers, already operating under tip compliance agreements created with the IRS more than 20 years ago, to voluntarily use new technologies to streamline compliance. Tips are already subject to federal income tax — hence both candidates embracing the idea of ending that policy.
Getting the credit
Trump wants the credit for the policy — and the votes of tipped workers, including rank-and-file members of the Culinary Union. In 2020, en route to a loss in Nevada by approximately 2.5 percentage points, he lost voters earning less than $50,000 annually by 16 percentage points, and union households by 18, per exit polls.
Trump said his internal polling shows “a lot” of Culinary members would be supporting him, and pitched a meeting with union leader Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge.
A Culinary spokesperson declined to comment.
While political opponents have come together in support of ending taxes on tips, labor economists have warned that benefits could be concentrated among the highest tip-earners — such as waiters at high-end restaurants — while giving companies more incentive to keep wages low.
Neither Trump nor Harris have offered many details, such as whether payroll taxes are included, if there should be an income cap, whether the benefit will be restricted to certain industries such as hospitality and if it should be structured as a deduction or exemption.
But Nicole Williams, a bartender on the Las Vegas Strip for the past 15 years and mother of seven who attended the Friday event, said it would help people like her.
Rising prices have forced her to cut back on activities, such as gymnastics and flag football for her children. Removing taxes on tips, Williams said, would offer a lifeline.
“When I look at my check and see that not only am I getting taxed on my wages, but I’m getting taxed on tips, it’s so frustrating,” Williams said. “It’s going to provide immediate relief to my pocketbook and my seven kids.”
On Friday, Trump was still mum on specific policy details, saying that the plan would benefit employees and employers and that workers will be happier due to the tax relief and therefore do a better job.
On the border and other topics
Trump also used the opportunity to make a direct appeal to Hispanic voters, saying the household wealth of the median Hispanic family grew 65 percent during his administration and that Hispanic unemployment hit an all-time low.
Data from the Census Bureau shows that median Hispanic household income rose about 8 percent between 2016 and 2020. While Hispanic unemployment did fall significantly during the Trump era, hitting a 3.9 percent mark that Biden tied in 2022, the pandemic caused it to rise to a 50-year high, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Beyond tips, Trump doubled down on a proposal to end federal taxation on Social Security benefits, which about 40 percent of Social Security recipients pay — a concept popular among retirees but one that economists fear would accelerate the program’s insolvency.
And he also pledged to cut energy prices in half, offer universal school choice, which would permit any student to attend private school through taxpayer-funded vouchers, and conduct the “largest deportation in the history of America.”
He said migrants coming over the border — including prisoners from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is false — have taken away jobs from Black and Hispanic people, and that union jobs would be next.
While his advisers have urged him to focus on the economy, Trump took multiple asides to bash Biden and Harris, calling each the worst president and vice president in the nation’s history, referring to Biden as angry and confused and making fun of the way Harris said “Thank you” at the Democratic National Convention.
He also took questions from reporters after speaking, including one about the release of federal land in Nevada for affordable housing (which has bipartisan support), to which he responded: “we want to have land, so we can have housing.”
