Your Definitive Guide to Tipping Building Staff

Of Tips and Bonuses

There is a difference between tips and bonuses. Shareholders tip at their discretion. Boards give bonuses — and the amount is treated as taxable income.

For some boards, deciding on an appropriate gratuity is uncomplicated. They have a super, porter, and perhaps a handyman to whom they want to show their appreciation. But staff at other buildings can number in the dozens, and determining the right gratuity becomes a bit trickier.

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The board should ask shareholders for a frank review of all employees, including doormen, amenity staff, and maintenance workers. Property managers can also evaluate building staff to help boards determine how much to give each. At many buildings, the board tends to give the super a bonus, and shareholders tend to tip everyone else.

Formulas

Whether determining tips or bonuses, boards should consider how long an employee has been working in the building, whether the employee has gone beyond the call of duty, and how much has been given in the past.

If your building has 30 full-time employees, and they are all union members, boards may opt to not give any of them bonuses or perks.

Instead, they might send tenants a list of the staff names and job descriptions so residents can determine how much to tip. Don't forget doormen who work weekend shifts or either late at night or early in the morning — they tend to get overlooked, as do maintenance crew. Don't forget to include their names on the list to tenants so everyone gets their fair share.

In buildings with a staff of eight to ten people, boards may opt to follow a sliding-scale formula, taking one amount and dividing it among the super, handymen, porters, and doormen; the board gives the super a third, and divides the remaining amount evenly among the handymen, porters, and doormen.

Depending on how long the super has been working in the building and how much he does, some buildings may give him a week's salary. Doormen and porters might get anywhere from half a week's to a full week's salary.

Supers who coordinate lobby renovations or other large-scale projects might get as much as $10,000 as a "thank you" for saving a great deal by performing work that would normally be done by contractors or consultants.

Taxes

If it's additional income, it is subject to withholding taxes. Sure, if you give the super a couple of hundred dollars it might not come up as a red flag for the IRS, but when the bonuses get into the thousands, you may be asking for trouble. Err on the side of caution and don't subject your building to a possible audit. If it's a bonus, pay it in a check, treat it as if it were a regular paycheck, and tax it.

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