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Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have now declared that they would abolish the tax on tips for service sector workers.

That does not mean, however, that there is a guarantee of change under the next president.

The former president first floated the idea at a rally in Las Vegas in June. The vice president did the same thing last night in the same city, backed by the Culinary Union, which represents workers who would most benefit from such a policy.

The votes of people who work in hotels, restaurants, bars and casinos are crucial to winning the state of Nevada, a center of tourism. Nevada is one of the most important voting districts in the 2024 election, which the Democrats have won in the last four presidential elections.

At a rally on Saturday at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Vice President Harris said: “If I am president, we will continue our fight for America’s working families. That includes raising the minimum wage and eliminating the tax on tips for service and restaurant workers,” she said.

An apparently angry Trump took to Truth Social after hearing her remarks, writing: “Kamala Harris, whose ‘honeymoon’ phase is coming to an end and who is slowly plummeting in the polls, just copied my NO TAXES ON TIPS policy.”

He continued, “The difference is she won’t do it, she just wants to do it for political reasons! This was TRUMP’s idea – she has no ideas, she can only steal from me. Remember Kamala proposed the BIGGEST TAX HIKE IN HISTORY – it won’t happen. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

He later added, “How long will it be before Kamala Harris comes out with another ‘TRUMP’ policy like, ‘Our retirees won’t pay taxes on Social Security?’ She’s looking really bad now! Everyone is waiting to see what idea or policy of mine she’ll copy next.”

Harris’ team elaborated on her proposal, pointing out that legislation would be needed to do this. As president, she said she would work with Congress to draft legislation that would impose an income limit and strict requirements to prevent hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their compensation to benefit from the provision.

In addition to an increase in the minimum wage, she would also support the proposal.

Bloomberg Reports that such a proposal should become law would reduce tax bills for roughly 6 million hospitality workers who reported a total of $38.3 billion in tips in 2018, the most recent year for which Internal Revenue Service data is available. That works out to an average of about $6,250 per worker who receives tips.

Nevada’s two Democratic senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, support such legislation, and bills have been introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

However, this does not mean that the directive is free from pitfalls or that there are no political hurdles to overcome before it becomes law.

According to the Tax Foundation, citing the Yale Budget Lab, only 2.5 percent of workers work in tipped jobs and only 5 percent of workers are in the bottom quarter of the income scale. The majority of low- and middle-income earners would be unaffected by any policy.

In addition, some tip recipients pay no income tax because their taxes are below the standard deduction.

In addition, allowing a certain type of income to be tax-free rather than taxable could encourage more businesses, such as waiters in restaurants, to move to a tip-based payment method and for those who already tip to increase the suggested tip amounts.

The Harris campaign’s statement seems to avoid some of these issues in the first place when it talks about non-tipping industries trying to change their payment models. Another catch is that to be considered a tip, the payment must be voluntary and not pre-agreed upon. If a lawyer pre-agreed upon a tip as part of their compensation, it would not be covered.

The existing draft laws contain hardly any provisions that could prevent this, nor any that would make the tax system more complicated for those affected.

This move would also exclude many people for whom a tipped wage model would not work, such as cashiers or store clerks compared to waiters or taxi drivers.

According to the Tax Foundation, a fairer model would be to increase the flat-rate deduction, which would provide tax relief for everyone regardless of their income level – even if that might not be such a catchy campaign slogan.