Volume 44, Issue 1 (Winter 2025)

Tax on Tips

Volume 44, Issue I (Winter 2025)

By Rebecca N. Morrow*

Carol, a 38-year-old single parent to an 18-year-old child, works full time as a restaurant server. Her employer pays her $2.13 per hour, which is legal according to federal law and the laws of Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. She also earns tips, which bring her wages up to $7.25 per hour. Her tips might have brought her wages above the $7.25 federal minimum wage, but when Carol makes more than $5.12 in hourly tips, her employer takes the excess and distributes it among Carol’s coworkers. Recently, Democrats and Republicans promised to adopt a “no tax on tips” policy, exempting tips from the federal income tax. On July 4, 2025, President Trump enacted the first-ever tips-received deduction, which is effective through 2028.

Disorganized Labor (Law)

Volume 44, Issue 1 (Winter 2025)

By Michael M. Oswalt*

How might ambitious but inexperienced, low-resourced groups succeed where mature organizations have already failed? This Article considers that question through the lens of the U.S. labor movement. Between 2022 and 2023, workers at companies thought to be unorganizable launched seemingly quixotic do-it-yourself unionization campaigns—and sometimes won. A key factor may have been workers’ reliance on bricolage, an approach to formidable challenges shown to differentiate start-ups that fizzle from those that innovate to surpass richer, more established competitors.