Can cooks and dishwashers be in the tip pool?
The short answer
Example math
Say your house requires servers to put 20% of their tips into a pool (illustrative; your house sets its own number). You make $400 in tips on a Friday, so $80 goes into the pool and you keep $320.
Who can share that $80 depends on your cash wage:
- You’re paid $2.13 an hour plus tips. The pool can include bussers, service bartenders, and other servers. If the $80 is also split with a cook or a dishwasher, DOL lists that as a tip-pooling problem.
- Everyone, you included, gets at least $7.25 an hour in cash wages. Now the employer can require the $80 to be split with the cook and the dishwasher too.
- Either way, none of the $80 can go to the employer, a manager, or a supervisor.
Not tax or legal advice. The 20% is made up for the example. Federal wage law doesn’t set a cap on how much you can be required to put in.
Check your estimate
Once your pool share is settled, estimate the federal deduction on the tips you kept after the pool, not the whole pool.
Open the calculator
Plain English
Your cash wage decides the pool
Federal wage law has two versions of a required tip pool, and your hourly cash wage decides which one your employer can run. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. The federal minimum cash wage for tipped workers is $2.13, with tips making up the rest.
If you’re paid $2.13 plus tips
When your employer counts your tips toward minimum wage, a required pool is limited to people in jobs that customarily and regularly get tips. DOL’s examples are waiters, bellhops, counter staff who serve customers, bussers, and service bartenders. Cooks and dishwashers aren’t in that group. Your employer also has to tell you the required contribution, and can count only the tips you end up keeping toward your wage.
If everyone gets at least $7.25
When every worker gets at least $7.25 an hour in cash wages, federal wage law lets the employer require servers to share with the kitchen, including cooks and dishwashers.
Who can never be in the pool
In both versions, your employer can’t keep any part of the pool, and managers and supervisors can’t take from it. See Can my manager or the owner take money from the tip pool?
Taxes use a different list
The IRS list of tipped occupations for the federal tip deduction does include cooks and dishwashers. That list decides whose pool money can be deducted. It doesn’t decide who your employer can require you to share with. See I’m a cook in the tip pool. Can I take the federal tip deduction?
Your state may have stricter rules.
Common mistakes
- Assuming the kitchen can always be in the pool. On a tipped cash wage below $7.25, it can’t be a required member.
- Assuming the kitchen can never be in the pool. At $7.25 or more for everyone, it can.
- Using the IRS tip-deduction list to decide who belongs in the pool.
- Forgetting that a manager who helps on the line still can’t take from the pool.
Official sources
Last verified:
Checked DOL Fact Sheet #15, 29 CFR 531.54, 29 U.S.C. 203(m), and DOL’s tipped minimum wage table (revised July 1, 2026) for the $2.13 and $7.25 figures.