You must report tips to your employer so that:

Report to your employer only cash, check, or credit card tips you receive.

If your total tips for any one month from any one job are less than $20, do not report the tips for that month to that employer.

Do not report the value of any noncash tips, such as tickets or passes, to your employer. You do not pay social security and Medicare taxes or railroad retirement tax on these tips.

If your employer does not give you any other way to report your tips, you can use Form 4070, Employee's Report of Tips to Employer. Fill in the information asked for on the form, sign and date the form, and give it to your employer. A sample filled-in Form 4070 is shown on this page. To get a year's supply of the form, ask the IRS or your employer for Publication 1244.

If you do not use Form 4070, give your employer a statement with the following information.

You must sign and date the statement. You should keep a copy with your personal records.

Your employer may require you to report your tips more than once a month. However, the statement cannot cover a period of more than one calendar month.

Your employer can have you furnish your tip statements electronically.

Give your report for each month to your employer by the 10th of the next month. If the 10th falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, give your employer the report by the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.

If your employment ends during the month, you can report your tips when your employment ends.

If you do not report tips to your employer as required, you may be subject to a penalty equal to 50% of the social security and Medicare taxes or railroad retirement tax you owe on the unreported tips. (For information about these taxes, see Reporting social security and Medicare taxes on tips not reported to your employer under Reporting Tips on Your Tax Return, later.) The penalty amount is in addition to the taxes you owe.

You can avoid this penalty if you can show reasonable cause for not reporting the tips to your employer. To do so, attach a statement to your return explaining why you did not report them.

Your regular pay may not be enough for your employer to withhold all the taxes you owe on your regular pay plus your reported tips. If this happens, you can give your employer money until the close of the calendar year to pay the rest of the taxes.

If you do not give your employer enough money, your employer will apply your regular pay and any money you give to the taxes, in the following order.

Any taxes that remain unpaid can be collected by your employer from your next paycheck. If withholding taxes remain uncollected at the end of the year, you may be subject to a penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes. See Publication 505, Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax, for more information.

Uncollected taxes. You must report on your tax return any social security and Medicare taxes or railroad retirement tax that remained uncollected at the end of 2003. See Reporting uncollected social security and Medicare taxes on tips under Reporting Tips on Your Tax Return, later. These uncollected taxes will be shown in box 12 of your 2003 Form W–2 (codes A and B).

Report your tips with your wages on line 1, Form 1040EZ, or line 7, Form 1040A or Form 1040.

You must report all tips you received in 2003, including both cash tips and noncash tips, on your tax return. Any tips you reported to your employer for 2003 are included in the wages shown in box 1 of your Form W–2. Add to the amount in box 1 only the tips you did not report to your employer.

If you received $20 or more in cash and charge tips in a month and did not report all of those tips to your employer, see Reporting social security and Medicare taxes on tips not reported to your employer, later.

If you did not keep a daily tip record as required and an amount is shown in box 8 of your Form W–2, see Allocated Tips, later.

If you kept a daily tip record and reported tips to your employer as required under the rules explained earlier, add the following tips to the amount in box 1 of your Form W–2.

If you received $20 or more in cash and charge tips in a month from any one job and did not report all of those tips to your employer, you must report the social security and Medicare taxes on the unreported tips as additional tax on your return. To report these taxes, you must file a return even if you would not otherwise have to file. You must use Form 1040. (You cannot file Form 1040EZ or Form 1040A.)

Use Form 4137, Social Security and Medicare Tax on Unreported Tip Income, to figure these taxes. Enter the tax on line 56, Form 1040, and attach the Form 4137 to your return.

If your employer could not collect all the social security and Medicare taxes or railroad retirement tax you owe on tips reported for 2003, the uncollected taxes will be shown in box 12 of your Form W–2 (codes A and B). You must report these amounts as additional tax on your return. You may have uncollected taxes if your regular pay was not enough for your employer to withhold all the taxes you owe and you did not give your employer enough money to pay the rest of the taxes.

To report these uncollected taxes, you must file a return even if you would not otherwise have to file. You must use Form 1040. (You cannot file Form 1040EZ or Form 1040A.) Include the taxes in your total tax amount on line 60, and write “UT” and the total of the uncollected taxes on the dotted line next to line 60.

If you receive tips as a self-employed person, you should report these tips as income on Schedule C or C-EZ. See Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business, for more information on reporting business income.

These are tips that your employer assigned to you in addition to the tips you reported to your employer for the year. Your employer will have done this only if:

The tips allocated to you are your share of an amount figured by subtracting the reported tips of all employees from 8% (or an approved lower rate) of food and drink sales (other than carryout sales and sales with a service charge of 10% or more). Your share of that amount was figured using either a method provided by an employer-employee agreement or a method provided by IRS regulations based on employees' sales or hours worked. For information about the exact allocation method used, ask your employer.

You must report allocated tips on your tax return unless either of the following exceptions applies.

If either exception applies, report your actual tips on your return. Do not report the allocated tips. See What tips to report under Reporting Tips on Your Tax Return, earlier.

If you must report allocated tips on your return, add the amount in box 8 of your Form W–2 to the amount in box 1. Report the total as wages on line 7 of Form 1040. (You cannot file Form 1040EZ or Form 1040A.)

Because social security and Medicare taxes were not withheld from the allocated tips, you must report those taxes as additional tax on your return. Complete Form 4137, and include the allocated tips on line 1 of the form. See Reporting social security and Medicare taxes on tips not reported to your employer under Reporting Tips on Your Tax Return, earlier.

Your employer can use a tip rate lower than 8% (but not lower than 2%) to figure allocated tips only if the IRS approves the lower rate. Either the employer or the employees can request approval of a lower rate by filing a petition with the IRS. The petition must include specific information about the business that will justify the lower rate. A user fee must be paid with the petition.

An employee petition can be filed only with the consent of a majority of the directly-tipped employees (waiters, bartenders, and others who receive tips directly from customers). The petition must state the total number of directly-tipped employees and the number of employees consenting to the petition. Employees filing the petition must promptly notify the employer, and the employer must promptly give the IRS a copy of any Form 8027, Employer's Annual Information Return of Tip Income and Allocated Tips, filed by the employer for the previous 3 years.

For more information about how to file a petition and what information to include, see the instructions for Form 8027.

If you have attempted to deal with an IRS problem unsuccessfully, you should contact your Taxpayer Advocate.

The Taxpayer Advocate independently represents your interests and concerns within the IRS by protecting your rights and resolving problems that have not been fixed through normal channels. While Taxpayer Advocates cannot change the tax law or make a technical tax decision, they can clear up problems that resulted from previous contacts and ensure that your case is given a complete and impartial review.

To contact your Taxpayer Advocate:

For more information, see Publication 1546, The Taxpayer Advocate Service of the IRS.

To find out what services are available, get Publication 910, Guide to Free Tax Services. It contains a list of free tax publications and an index of tax topics. It also describes other free tax information services, including tax education and assistance programs and a list of TeleTax topics.