Some hospitality workers told The Daily Wire they received larger tax refunds this filing season than last year and said they were unaware of President Donald Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” policy. The outlet’s interviews included a Washington, D.C., waitress who initially attributed her refund change to other factors before reacting to the tip-tax break when it was described to her.
Servers and bartenders interviewed by The Daily Wire said their tax refunds were larger this year than last year, though several told the outlet they had not heard of President Donald Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” policy.
In one exchange described by The Daily Wire, a waitress at Pearl Dive Oyster Bar in Washington, D.C., said she received a refund this year after owing taxes the year before. When asked why she thought her tax situation changed, she initially guessed it was because she had made more money at a previous job and said she had not heard of the tip-tax policy. After the policy was mentioned to her, she asked, “Is that a good thing for us?” and later said of Trump, “I guess that’s one good thing he did.”
The Daily Wire article also described a bartender who initially credited his refund change to claiming a child as a dependent, but who then said the tip-tax change likely explained the difference after hearing about it.
The article cited a statistic that “2025 was a historic high for tax refunds,” putting the average refund at $3,274—an 11% increase from the prior year—attributing that figure to the Center for American Progress.
Separately, Trump was quoted by The Daily Wire as touting the policy at an event in Las Vegas, saying that “thousands” of tipped workers in Nevada received “the biggest tax refunds of their entire lives.”
While The Daily Wire framed the change as “no tax on tips,” other reporting has described the policy more narrowly as a federal income-tax break that allows eligible workers to deduct a limited amount of qualified, properly reported tip income for a set period, rather than eliminating all taxes on tip income.
