Minimum Wage for Servers in Georgia: $2.13 Cash Wage and Tip Rules

Servers in Georgia are entitled to a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour under federal law. Restaurants can pay a cash wage as low as $2.13 per hour and count your tips toward the remaining $5.12, but if your cash wages plus tips don’t average $7.25 for every hour you worked in a given week, your employer has to pay the difference. Georgia’s own state minimum of $5.15 almost never applies, because nearly every restaurant falls under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

Why Federal Law Sets the Floor

Georgia’s state minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, and the state statute says nothing about tipped workers at all.¹ The federal Fair Labor Standards Act covers any business with at least $500,000 in annual gross revenue, plus individual workers who handle goods or communications crossing state lines.² Almost every restaurant in Georgia meets one of those thresholds, and when federal coverage applies, the higher of the two rates controls.³ The $5.15 state figure would only come into play at a tiny, purely local operation under $500,000 in sales with no interstate activity. For a standard restaurant job, $7.25 is the number that matters.

How the $2.13 Cash Wage Works

The $2.13 figure isn’t a separate minimum wage. It’s the lowest cash wage a federal employer can pay a tipped worker, built on the assumption that tips will carry the paycheck the rest of the way to $7.25. The $5.12 gap between the two is called the tip credit, and the employer “takes” that credit against your tips.⁴

You qualify as a tipped employee if you regularly receive more than $30 per month in tips.⁴ Most servers, bartenders, and bussers clear that bar easily. A host who occasionally gets handed a dollar, or a kitchen worker with no customer contact, usually doesn’t, and must be paid the full $7.25 in cash. The classification follows your actual duties, not your job title: an employer can’t call you a server, assign you to prep and dish work all week, and still pay you $2.13 for those hours.

There’s also a limit on how much untipped side work a server can do while the employer uses the tip credit. The relevant rule is 29 CFR 531.56(e), the original dual-jobs regulation, which was reinstated after a 2021 revision was vacated by the Fifth Circuit in 2024.⁵ If your shifts routinely include long stretches of work that doesn’t produce tips, it’s worth asking whether the tip credit is being properly applied to those hours.

The Weekly Top-Off Rule

This is the core protection. Each workweek, your cash wages plus tips must average at least $7.25 per hour. If they don’t, the employer owes you the shortfall.⁴ The calculation is weekly. A great Friday night can’t be averaged against a dead Tuesday across weeks, and a monthly average isn’t allowed.

Here’s the math. Say you work 30 hours in a week at $2.13 per hour and earn $100 in tips. Your cash wages come to $63.90, and your total compensation is $163.90. Divide by 30 hours: $5.46 per hour, below $7.25. The 30 hours should have paid at least $217.50, so your employer owes you another $53.60 for that week. Skipping that reconciliation is the single most common wage violation in restaurants.

What Your Employer Has to Do to Pay You $2.13

The tip credit comes with conditions. Miss any one of them and the employer owes you the full $7.25 for every hour, no credit allowed.⁴

Before paying you the reduced cash wage, the employer must tell you they are using a tip credit, how much that credit is, and what your cash wage will be. If no one ever explained any of this, the credit is invalid from day one.
You get to keep every tip you receive. The employer can’t skim tips for the house or use them to cover operating costs.
Managers, supervisors, and owners can’t take any share of employee tips, through a pool, a jar, or any other arrangement. The only tip a manager keeps is one a customer hands them directly for service the manager personally and solely provided.⁶

A “manager” for this rule is anyone who mainly runs the business or a department, directs at least two full-time employees, and has authority over hiring and firing. An owner with at least a 20% equity stake who is actively involved in management is also excluded. There’s no salary threshold for being treated as a manager when it comes to tips.

Tip Pooling

Pooling is legal, with limits. When the employer takes a tip credit, the pool can only include employees who regularly receive tips (servers, bartenders, bussers). Cooks and dishwashers are out.⁴ If the employer pays the full $7.25 cash and takes no tip credit at all, the pool can include back-of-house staff.⁵ Either way, managers and owners stay out, and the house can never keep a cut.

Overtime Pay

Servers get time-and-a-half for hours over 40 in a workweek, the same as any other covered worker. The overtime rate is calculated from the full $7.25, not from $2.13. Multiply $7.25 by 1.5 to get $10.875 per hour, then subtract the $5.12 tip credit. The employer’s cash obligation for each overtime hour is $5.76.⁷ If your overtime cash wage looks almost identical to your regular $2.13, someone used the wrong base rate.

Service Charges Are Not Tips

An automatic gratuity on a large party’s bill, a banquet fee, or a bottle service charge is not a tip under federal law. A payment only counts as a tip when the customer freely decides whether to pay it, sets the amount, and chooses who receives it.⁸ If any of those is missing, it’s a service charge, and service charges legally belong to the employer.

This matters for your weekly $7.25 calculation. If your employer counts a mandatory 18% auto-gratuity as part of “your tips” when running the top-off math, that’s wrong. When service charges are distributed to staff, they’re treated as regular wages, not tips, and they don’t go into the tip credit calculation.

Deductions That Can’t Drop You Below $7.25

At $2.13 per hour in cash wages, there’s essentially no room for the employer to deduct anything from your paycheck. Federal law bars deductions, like uniforms, breakage, cash register shortages, or walkouts, when they bring your effective pay below the minimum wage. For a Georgia server on the tipped minimum, that line is almost always crossed.

Watch for charges for required uniforms or aprons, deductions for broken glassware, dine-and-dash tabs charged back to the server, and mandatory certification fees pushed onto employees. Credit card tips come with one legal deduction: the actual processing fee the card company charges on the tip portion. An employer who deducts a flat 5% when the real processing rate is lower is keeping the difference illegally, and credit card tips have to be paid by your regular payday rather than held until the card company reimburses the restaurant.

Reporting Tips to the IRS

Separate from the wage rules, you have a tax obligation. If you receive $20 or more in cash tips in a calendar month from a single employer, you have to report those tips to the employer by the 10th of the following month.⁹ The employer uses that number to withhold income tax, Social Security, and Medicare.

Keeping your own daily log of cash tips, credit card tips, and pooled amounts protects you two ways. It keeps the IRS reporting honest, and it gives you the record you need if you later have to prove your employer wasn’t hitting the $7.25 floor.

If Your Pay Is Wrong

If your employer is skipping the weekly top-off, keeping a share of your tips, never gave you notice about the tip credit, or deducting costs that drop you below minimum wage, you have real options. You can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division online or by calling 1-866-487-9243.¹⁰ You can also sue in federal or state court.

The recovery can be substantial. An employer who violates the minimum wage or overtime rules owes the unpaid wages plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, which doubles what’s owed. The court must also award reasonable attorney’s fees.¹¹ When an employer illegally keeps employee tips, the liability includes the full amount of tips kept plus the tip credit taken, again doubled. The statute of limitations is two years from the violation, or three years if the violation was willful.¹² Waiting too long forfeits the earlier weeks, so if the numbers on your paycheck look off, start keeping records and act on it.

1
Georgia Department of Labor. Minimum Wage
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 27 – New Businesses Under The Fair Labor Standards Act
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 US Code 206 – Minimum Wage
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 203 – Definitions
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Tip Regulations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 15B – Managers and Supervisors Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Tips
7
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Overtime Calculator Advisor
8
Internal Revenue Service. Tips Versus Service Charges – How to Report
9
Internal Revenue Service. Tip Recordkeeping and Reporting
10
Worker.gov. Filing a Complaint With the US Department of Labors Wage and Hour Division
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations