Georgia Server Minimum Wage: $2.13 Rate and Tip Credit Rules

The server minimum wage in Georgia is $7.25 per hour, made up of a $2.13 direct cash wage from your employer plus up to $5.12 per hour counted from your tips. If your tips don’t bring you to $7.25 in a given workweek, your employer has to make up the difference. That’s the short version. The details below are where paychecks get won or lost.

Why $7.25 Applies Instead of Georgia’s $5.15

Georgia’s own minimum wage statute, O.C.G.A. § 34-4-3, sets the state floor at $5.15 per hour.¹ The statute also says it doesn’t apply when a federal minimum wage law covers the employer at a higher rate.²

Nearly every restaurant, hotel, and bar in Georgia is covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, either because it brings in at least $500,000 in annual revenue or because its employees handle goods that cross state lines. For those employers, the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour is the binding number.³ The $5.15 state rate would only matter at a business genuinely outside FLSA coverage, which is unusual in hospitality.

How the Tip Credit Math Works

The $2.13 cash wage and the $5.12 tip credit add up to $7.25. The tip credit is not something taken out of your tips; it’s an accounting mechanism that lets your employer count part of what you earn in tips toward its own wage obligation.⁴

The ceiling matters. The tip credit can never exceed what you actually earned in tips. If you only made $3.00 per hour in tips during a shift, the employer’s credit is capped at $3.00, not $5.12, and the employer owes you the difference. The statute puts it plainly: the credit “may not exceed the value of the tips actually received by an employee.”⁵

Who Counts as a Tipped Employee

Not every worker who sometimes gets a tip qualifies for the $2.13 rate. Federal law defines a tipped employee as someone who customarily and regularly earns more than $30 per month in tips.⁵ If you don’t clear that threshold, your employer cannot apply the tip credit at all, and you’re owed the full $7.25 in direct wages.

A dishwasher who occasionally gets tipped out by a server probably doesn’t customarily and regularly earn $30 in direct tips from customers. Classifying that worker at $2.13 to apply a tip credit violates the FLSA.

Service Charges Are Not Tips

Mandatory charges added to a bill, such as auto-gratuities on large parties, bottle service fees, and hotel room service charges, are legally service charges, not tips.⁶ Service charges belong to the employer, who can distribute them however they choose. They don’t count toward the $30 monthly threshold for tipped status, and the employer can’t use them to satisfy the tip credit. When a service charge is paid to you, it’s treated as regular wages subject to normal withholding.

A real tip is voluntary: the customer decides whether and how much. If your restaurant adds a mandatory 20% charge for tables of six or more, that’s a service charge even if customers think of it as going straight to the server.

What Your Employer Must Tell You Before Paying $2.13

An employer cannot simply start paying you the tipped cash wage without explanation. Before claiming the tip credit, the employer has to inform you of all of the following:

The direct cash wage being paid (at least $2.13 per hour).
The additional amount being claimed as a tip credit (no more than $5.12).
That the tip credit cannot exceed the tips you actually receive.
That you keep all your tips, except in a valid tip pool among employees who customarily receive tips.
That the tip credit doesn’t apply unless you’ve been informed of these provisions.

The notice can be given orally or in writing, but it has to come before the tip credit takes effect.⁷ An employer who skips this step loses the right to claim the tip credit at all and owes the full $7.25 for every hour worked during the period of non-compliance.⁵ A lot of employers assume the tip credit is automatic. It isn’t.

When Tips Fall Short of $7.25

If your combined cash wage and tips don’t reach $7.25 per hour in any workweek, your employer must make up the difference. The calculation runs on a workweek basis, not shift by shift.⁸ A dead Monday lunch can be offset by a strong Friday dinner as long as the weekly average hits the minimum.

Say you work 30 hours in a week and earn $120 in tips. That’s $4.00 per hour in tips. Add the $2.13 cash wage and you’re at $6.13 per hour, which is $1.12 below the $7.25 minimum. Your employer owes you an extra $1.12 for each of those 30 hours, totaling $33.60 in make-up pay for the week. The obligation is automatic. You don’t have to ask, and your employer can’t make it conditional.

Keep a daily tip log. If there’s ever a dispute, the burden generally falls on the employer to show it paid at least minimum wage, and your own records are the fastest way to confirm what you were owed.

Overtime for Tipped Workers

Work more than 40 hours in a workweek and overtime kicks in at 1.5 times your regular rate. For tipped employees, the regular rate is the full $7.25, not $2.13. The employer can still apply the same $5.12 tip credit during overtime hours:

$7.25 × 1.5 = $10.88 overtime rate, minus $5.12 tip credit, equals $5.76 in direct cash wages per overtime hour.⁹

The common error is calculating overtime off the $2.13 cash wage. If your employer pays $2.13 × 1.5 = $3.20 per overtime hour, you’re being significantly underpaid. The correct direct cash payment per overtime hour is $5.76, nearly triple the straight-time cash wage.

Tip Pooling and What Managers Can’t Do

Tip pools are common, and the rules depend on whether your employer takes a tip credit. When the employer claims the tip credit (paying you $2.13), the pool can only include employees who customarily and regularly receive tips: servers, bartenders, bussers, hosts.⁵

If the employer pays the full $7.25 and takes no tip credit, back-of-house staff like cooks and dishwashers can also share in the pool.⁸

One rule applies either way: managers and supervisors can never keep any portion of employees’ tips, through a pool or otherwise.⁸ An owner or manager who takes from the tip pool is violating federal law, and the penalties include repaying every dollar plus potential civil fines.

Credit Card Processing Fees

Your employer can deduct the credit card processing fee attributable to a tip, but only the fee on the tip itself, not the fee on the whole transaction. If the processing fee is 3% and a customer leaves a $20 tip on a card, the employer can withhold 60 cents. The deduction can’t push your effective hourly earnings below minimum wage, and your employer has to pay the tip by the regular payday, not whenever the card processor settles.

Deductions That Can’t Push You Below Minimum Wage

Uniforms, cash register shortages, walkouts, broken plates: employers sometimes try to pass these costs along to servers. Federal law draws a hard line. If a deduction would reduce your earnings below minimum wage or cut into required overtime pay, the employer cannot make it.¹⁰

Because most tipped workers in Georgia earn exactly $2.13 in direct wages, there is almost no room for any employer-benefit deduction without crossing that line. Requiring you to buy a uniform, cover a dine-and-dash, or absorb a shortage would almost always drop your hourly pay below $7.25 once the tip credit is counted. Employers can’t dodge the rule by asking for cash out of pocket instead of a payroll deduction; the FLSA treats both the same way.¹⁰

Side Work and the Dual Jobs Rule

Servers don’t spend every minute at a table. Rolling silverware, refilling condiments, sweeping, prepping garnishes: these are part of the job. The question is whether the $2.13 rate still applies during that work.

Federal law uses a dual jobs framework. If you’re employed in a tipped occupation and you also perform related tasks that don’t directly generate tips, the employer can keep applying the tip credit for that side work. Setting tables, making coffee, and occasionally washing glasses are all treated as part of a server’s tipped occupation.¹¹

The line is crossed when you’re doing a genuinely different, non-tipped job. If the restaurant asks you to spend part of your shift on maintenance or warehouse inventory, those hours are a separate occupation. No tip credit applies, and you’re owed $7.25 for that time. A stricter time-based version of this rule (the so-called 80/20/30 rule) was vacated by a federal appeals court in 2024 and later withdrawn by the Department of Labor, so the simpler dual jobs standard is what controls now.

Where to File a Wage Complaint

Georgia’s Department of Labor handles unemployment and job placement, but it does not enforce federal minimum wage or tip credit rules. That falls to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. If your employer is paying less than required, skipping tip credit make-up pay, letting managers take tips, or making illegal deductions, you can file a complaint by calling 1-866-487-9243 or using the WHD’s online complaint page.¹²

You don’t need a lawyer. The WHD investigates confidentially, and federal law prohibits your employer from retaliating against you for filing. Claims can reach back two years for standard violations and three years for willful ones, so past underpayments may still be recoverable.

1
Justia. Georgia Code 34-4-3 – Amount of Minimum Wage to Be Paid by Employers; Employers and Employees Covered by Chapter
2
Georgia Department of Labor. Minimum Wage
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Employee Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 203 – Definitions
6
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 761, Tips – Withholding and Reporting
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 15 – Tipped Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Tip Regulations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
9
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Overtime Calculator Advisor
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Deductions From Wages for Uniforms and Other Facilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
11
Federal Register. Tip Regulations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act – Restoration of Regulatory Language
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U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint