Visitors from countries where service is included find American tipping baffling, and the confusion costs them either money or goodwill. The thing to understand first is that in New York, tipped workers are legally paid a lower base wage than other workers on the assumption that tips will make up the difference. A tip is not a bonus for exceptional service. It is the greater part of the person’s income.
That framing makes the rest of it straightforward.
Restaurants with table service
18 to 20 per cent of the pre-tax total. Twenty is the current normal in New York; eighteen is acceptable; fifteen reads as a complaint.
There is a shortcut New Yorkers use: New York City sales tax is 8.875 per cent, so doubling the tax line gives you just under 18 per cent. Round up from there.
If the bill already includes a service charge — common for parties of six or more, and increasingly common generally — it will say so on the bill. Read it before adding more.
Tip on the pre-tax amount if you want to be precise. Nobody will notice or mind if you tip on the total.
Bars
One to two dollars per drink if you are paying as you go, or 18 to 20 per cent if you are running a tab. A complicated cocktail warrants the higher end; a bottle of beer does not.
Tipping on the first round tends to improve the speed of the second, which is not officially how it works and is entirely how it works.
Counter service and coffee shops
This is the grey area, and it has got greyer since card machines started asking.
For a coffee handed over a counter, no tip is required and declining is normal. The screen will offer 15, 20 and 25 per cent, and there is a “no tip” option, sometimes in smaller type.
For a made-to-order sandwich, a full food order at a counter, or anywhere with a tip jar and someone who has actually assembled something for you, a dollar or two, or 10 per cent, is a reasonable habit.
Taxis and rideshares
15 to 20 per cent. The payment screen in a yellow cab offers preset percentages and a custom option. Rideshare apps ask afterwards, and drivers see whether you tipped.
Add a couple of dollars if the driver handles luggage.
Hotels
Housekeeping: three to five dollars a night, left in the room each morning rather than in a lump at the end — the person cleaning your room on Tuesday may not be the one there on Friday.
Bellhop or porter: one to two dollars a bag.
Doorman who hails you a cab: one to two dollars.
Concierge: five to twenty dollars if they have secured something difficult, and nothing for directions.
Everyone else
Food delivery: 15 to 20 per cent, minimum five dollars.
Barbers and hairdressers: 20 per cent.
Tour guides: 10 to 20 per cent, or ten dollars a head on a walking tour. Free walking tours are not free; the guide is working entirely for tips and twenty dollars a person is the going rate.
Bartenders at an open bar at an event: a dollar or two a drink even though the drink is free.
Where not to tip
Fast food. Retail shops. Museums. Airline staff. Anywhere you have simply picked something up off a shelf.
The other things not in the price
Sales tax. New York City charges 8.875 per cent, and it is added at the register, not shown on the shelf label or the menu. Every price you see is smaller than what you pay.
The exception: clothing and footwear under $110 per item are exempt from both city and state sales tax. Two shirts at $105 each are tax free; one coat at $115 is not.
Hotel taxes and fees. State and city taxes add roughly 15 per cent to the room rate, plus a small nightly occupancy charge. On top of that, many New York hotels apply a mandatory facility fee or destination fee that is not in the advertised nightly rate and can be twenty-five to fifty dollars a night. Check the total, not the headline.
Ticket fees. Concert, theatre and attraction tickets routinely carry service and facility charges added at checkout, sometimes 15 to 20 per cent of the face value.
Restaurant surcharges. Some restaurants add a small percentage for employee health benefits or a kitchen appreciation fee. It should be disclosed on the menu.
How much this adds up to
For budgeting purposes, assume any restaurant meal costs about 30 per cent more than the menu prices suggest once tax and tip are counted. A $100 dinner for two is $110 with tax and $130 with a 20 per cent tip.
That is not a hidden cost so much as an unadvertised one. Building it into your expectations from the first meal makes the whole trip less irritating.
A note on being asked
Tipping culture in the United States has expanded into places it did not used to reach, and there is a live domestic argument about it. You will be presented with a tip screen in situations where a New Yorker would decline without a second thought. Declining is not rude. Under-tipping a waiter or a driver, who is being paid on the assumption of the tip, is a different matter.