A better case for tipping

If New Zealand were to move towards a tipping norm, here's an entrepreneurial idea.

Set up a restaurant. The wait staff are all volunteers. They still have to pass through normal recruitment practices, but they're volunteers. List on the menu prices that there is no charge at all included in the prices for service: none. The wait staff receive no pay except that which is provided by diners as a gift, and list some suggested gratuity levels that would provide, if every diner paid those amounts, various wage levels from $15/hr to $30/hr.

Currently menu prices include not only the cost of wait staff but also the GST that applies on the service provided by the wait staff. My restaurant only charges GST on the non-waitstaff costs.

And restaurants normally have to compete for staff based on salary, but the gifts provided to my staff would all be before-tax. And since nobody's tracking how much the wait staff receive in donations, they'd be on their own recognisance when it came to things like income tax and ACC levies. Really, the tips are a gift, right? There's no gift duty in New Zealand (though I'm pretty sure IRD doesn't consider tips to be gifts).

I might change my mind about this whole tipping thing.