Are all employers covered by federal minimum wage laws?
You are covered by federal minimum wage law if your enterprise has annual sales of $500,000 or more. Regardless of your sales volume, if you have any employees who engage in “interstate commerce” (example: employees who regularly take out-of-state phone calls, process credit cards from out of state, unload goods shipped from another state, etc.), these employees are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. If your sales volume is under $500,000 a year, you are probably covered by state law and should check with your state restaurant association or state labor department for more details. What am I required to pay tipped employees? That depends on your state. The required cash wage for tipped employees under federal law is currently $2.13 an hour. That means employers in states that follow federal law can pay tipped employees a cash wage of $2.13 an hour and apply tip earnings toward the balance of the minimum wage obligation. (This is called taking a “tip credit.”) To illustrate: Under
