Dallas server pay and tip rules: the Texas and federal baseline

A Dallas restaurant job can implicate federal wage-and-hour law, the Texas Minimum Wage Act, and the Texas Payday Law at the same time. Those are different statutes. The Fair Labor Standards Act sets a federal cash-wage floor and, for qualifying tipped occupations, an optional tip credit. The Texas Minimum Wage Act generally adopts that federal rate and then steps aside for people already covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Payday Law is about being paid in full and on time—not about inventing a higher Dallas hourly rate.

Texas Labor Code section 62.051 requires an employer, except as provided in section 62.057, to pay each employee the federal minimum wage under 29 U.S.C. § 206. The Texas Workforce Commission’s current minimum-wage page states that Texas adopts the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, effective July 24, 2009. There is no higher Texas restaurant cash wage in that official explanation.

Section 62.151 then says Chapter 62 and a municipal ordinance or charter provision governing wages in private employment, other than wages under a public contract, do not apply to a person covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. For a typical FLSA-covered restaurant server, the federal statute is the wage-floor statute; Texas Chapter 62 is not a second, higher cash wage.

Texas Labor Code section 62.0515(a) states that, except as otherwise provided in that section, the minimum wage provided by Chapter 62 supersedes a wage established in an ordinance, order, or charter provision governing wages in private employment, other than wages under a public contract. “Governmental entity” in that section includes a municipality.

This guide therefore does not treat a City of Dallas restaurant minimum wage as a current private-employment rule. It also does not describe a Dallas restaurant scheduling or paid-leave ordinance, because no current official Dallas source in this review established such a rule as in force. If a later official source does so, that is a next-review item—not a municipal rule this page can manufacture.

Neighborhood, venue, or shift-type names do not change the legal layer. A workplace inside Dallas city limits and a workplace elsewhere in Dallas County still have to be checked against federal coverage, Texas payday rules, and the actual paystub—not against an assumed city wage card.

29 U.S.C. § 203(t) defines a tipped employee as an employee engaged in an occupation in which the employee customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips. 29 CFR 531.50 and 531.59 currently identify the corresponding cash wage, for a lawful tip credit, as not less than the August 20, 1996 cash wage of $2.13, with tips making up the difference to the section 6(a)(1) minimum wage.

The statute and regulation impose conditions. The employer must inform the employee of the tip-credit provisions in advance. The employee must retain tips except for a required pool limited, when a tip credit is taken, to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips. The extra amount credited for tips may not exceed tips actually received. If those conditions are not met for the hours in question, the employer is not entitled to the credit for those hours.

Section 203(m)(2)(B) and 29 CFR 531.52 also say an employer may not keep tips for any purpose, including allowing managers or supervisors to keep any portion, whether or not a tip credit is taken. A manager or supervisor may keep only tips received directly from customers based on service that person directly and solely provides. That federal keep-tips rule is independent of Texas Chapter 62.

29 CFR 531.56(e) distinguishes a dual job from related duties inside a tipped occupation. If a person is employed in two occupations—for example, maintenance work and table service—a tip credit may be taken only for hours in the occupation that qualifies as tipped. Hours in the non-tipped occupation require the full cash wage.

The same regulation distinguishes that situation from related duties performed as part of a tipped occupation, which need not by themselves be directed toward producing tips. The current eCFR text reviewed on August 22, 2026, does not state a percentage-of-shift cutoff in that dual-job paragraph. This guide therefore does not invent an 80/20 or similar numerical side-work test. Preserve actual time and duty notes so the occupation question can be checked against the current regulation and the paystub.

Texas Labor Code section 62.052, which applies when Chapter 62 itself applies, defines a tipped employee as a person who customarily and regularly receives more than $20 a month in tips and then points to the federal section 3(m) amount. Because section 62.151 removes Chapter 62 from FLSA-covered employees, do not blend the Chapter 62 $20 figure into a federal $30 analysis for a covered restaurant server.

29 CFR 531.55 says a compulsory charge for service, such as a percentage the establishment imposes on the customer, is not a tip even if the employer later distributes it. Those sums, if distributed, may count as wages toward the monetary requirements of the Act, but they are not tips for the tip-credit or tipped-employee tests. IRS Topic 761 gives the same tax distinction for employer-set auto-gratuities.

Pooling rules split on whether the employer takes a section 3(m)(2)(A) tip credit. If it does, 29 CFR 531.54 limits a required pool to customarily and regularly tipped employees and requires notice of any required contribution amount. If the employer pays the full minimum wage in cash and takes no tip credit, the same regulation allows a pool that includes employees who are not in a customarily tipped occupation, still excluding employers, managers, and supervisors.

An employer that collects and redistributes tips must fully distribute them no later than the regular payday for the workweek in which the tips were collected, or as soon as practicable after that payday if the amount cannot be ascertained in time. Record the amount actually received, the pool or tip-out context, and the payday—not a hoped-for share.

29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1) requires, except as otherwise provided, overtime pay of at least one and one-half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek for covered nonexempt employees. That is a workweek test. It is not Nevada-style daily overtime after 8 hours. The Texas Workforce Commission payday page states that Texas does not automatically require extra pay merely because work falls on a holiday or weekend; individual company policy generally sets that premium, and a written policy or agreement can make promised extra pay enforceable under the Payday Law.

For a tipped employee, 29 CFR 531.60 says the regular rate includes the tip credit taken per hour, not tips received above that credit. Do not compute overtime by multiplying only the $2.13 cash wage by one and one-half if a lawful tip credit is in use. Conversely, do not assume a tip credit remains available in a week when the employee did not qualify as a tipped employee in the relevant occupation.

Coverage and exemptions still matter. 29 U.S.C. § 203(s) generally treats an enterprise as covered when it has employees engaged in commerce or handling goods that have moved in commerce and its annual dollar volume is not less than $500,000, exclusive of certain separately stated retail excise taxes. Individual coverage can also apply when the employee is engaged in commerce. This page does not decide whether a particular Dallas employer is covered; it identifies the statute to compare with the hours record.

The Texas Workforce Commission’s Payday Law explanation is the practical Dallas record map. Nonexempt employees must be paid at least twice a month; employees exempt from FLSA overtime must be paid at least once a month. Employers must post paydays. If no payday is designated, the paydays are the first and the 15th. A discharged employee must be paid in full within six calendar days; an employee who quits must be paid in full on the next regular payday.

Texas Labor Code section 62.003’s written earnings-statement duty applies when Chapter 62 itself applies. Because section 62.151 removes Chapter 62 from a person covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, a typical FLSA-covered Dallas restaurant server should not treat 62.003 as that worker’s state-law paystub right. For employees to whom FLSA section 6 or sections 6 and 7(a) apply—the usual nonexempt restaurant-server category—29 CFR 516.2 requires the employer to keep payroll records of hours worked each workday and workweek, the regular rate, total wages, additions and deductions, and the date of payment. Bona fide executive, administrative, or professional employees have a different, shorter record set under 29 CFR 516.3; this guide does not treat typical servers as that category. Line the employer records, and any pay document actually issued, against scheduled time, overtime hours, cash tips, card tips, and any service-charge wages.

Payday Law deductions generally require a court order, a law, or the employee’s written authorization for a lawful purpose. TWC says Texas does not require meal or rest breaks; if rest breaks of 20 minutes or less are given, federal hours-worked guidance treats them as paid, and a bona fide meal break of 30 minutes or more during which the employee is fully relieved need not be paid. Those are record questions, not a Dallas scheduling ordinance.

TWC says a Payday Law wage claim must be filed no later than 180 days after the wages were originally due, and TWC uses the date the claim is received. The minimum-wage page separately notes a two-year civil-lawsuit period for unpaid minimum wages plus an equal amount as liquidated damages. 29 U.S.C. § 255 generally allows two years for a Fair Labor Standards Act minimum-wage or overtime action, or three years if the violation is willful—longer than the 180-day TWC payday-claim deadline. Missing a deadline is not cured by a careful personal log.

TWC also tells claimants to identify each type of unpaid wage and how the amount was calculated, and to send supporting documents such as a recent payroll stub. That is why a Dallas-focused guide starts with records rather than with a city earnings narrative. Save the pay document actually issued, the schedule, and a same-day note of cash, card, and tip-out amounts.

The IRS says all cash and non-cash tips are income. In IRS usage, “cash tips” include physical cash, checks, credit and debit cards, gift cards, electronic or mobile payments denominated in cash, and amounts received through a tip pool or tip share. Non-cash property such as event tickets is still income on the federal return but is not part of the employer-report category. Employees must keep a daily tip record, report those cash tips to the employer unless the total from that employer is less than $20 for the calendar month, and report all tips on the federal return. Topic 761 puts the written employer report on the tenth day of the following month when that cash-tip total, including charged tips, is $20 or more.

Those tax-record duties are independent of whether the employer takes a federal tip credit. A $2.13 cash wage on the stub does not reduce the duty to report tips. Employer-set service charges distributed to the worker are non-tip wages for IRS purposes. A personal log in TipKeepr can support that daily record; it is not a tax return or an employer payroll record.

No official wage table can predict an individual Dallas server’s tips. This page therefore explains the federal floor, the tip-credit conditions, the weekly overtime test, and the Texas payday documents that make those rules checkable. It does not rank neighborhoods or estimate a nightly result.

TipKeepr keeps all historical data available on Free, with weekly analytics navigation. Premium adds broader date ranges and additional work records when a worker needs them. Neither plan replaces employer payroll records, a TWC or U.S. Department of Labor claim, or tax or legal advice.