Tipping Legislation IRE
If you are an Employer with a business account and JustTip processes tips on behalf of your business, the following is an overview of the legal aspects of the JustTip service.
Legislation
The main piece of legislation governing tipping is the Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022, which came into effect on 1st of December 2022. The Key point of this legislation in respect of how you treat tips is:
Tips as part of base pay
Tips cannot be used to make up for any part of employees' base pay. for example, if an employee has a basic rate of €15 an hour, you cannot pay the employee €10 and take the remaining €5 from the tip pool. Tips cannot be deducted from an employee's wages.
Tipping Policy
As a business that processes tips, you have a regulatory responsibility to display a tipping policy to customers and staff, which must outline the fair and transparent way in which you divide tips and gratuities among staff.
Transaction Reports
All businesses that process tips are required to keep full end-to-end transaction reports as well as keeping full records of how and when tips were distributed amongst staff. These reports must be available to staff within 10 days of request from employees.
Electronic/Card Tips
All tips collected via card or electronic payments must be treated in the same respect as cash tips and be distributed fairly among staff.
Enforcement
Tipping legislation is enforced by the WRC, which can issue fines and order businesses to reimburse staff who did not receive fair and transparent tip allocation.