Are coatroom and locker room attendants tips tax deductible in 2026?
Yes — coatroom and locker room attendants are on the IRS tipped occupation list (code 211). Tips in this job are deductible for 2026, up to $25,000, if the customer chose the amount and could have declined.
Treasury Tipped Occupation Code 211 · Entertainment and events · official title: Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants
How tipping works in this job
This is a dish-on-the-counter job: small cash amounts, given at the moment of handover, dozens of times a night. Golf and country club locker rooms work the same way, with larger individual amounts and a strong seasonal pattern. It is nearly all cash, which makes your own running record the only evidence there is.
The regulations say: Provide personal items to patrons or customers in locker rooms, dressing rooms, or coatrooms. Examples given: Coat checker, washroom attendant, bathhouse attendant.
The thing most likely to disqualify your tips
The coat check fee is not your tip. Where a venue charges $3 a coat, that charge is the venue’s revenue even if you collect it by hand — the qualifying tip is only what the patron adds on top of it, into the dish.
Check your own numbers
Pre-filled for coatroom and locker room attendants. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Step 1 — your occupation
Checking for Coatroom and locker room attendants (Treasury code 211). This occupation is on the list.
Step 2 — is it actually a tip?
Answer for the money you are asking about. If some of your income is tips and some is service charges, run them separately.
Step 3 — your tips and income
The phase-out runs on modified AGI, which for most people is the same as AGI.
3 questions left to answer.
OBBBA Deductions · obbbadeductions.com
Tips deduction worksheet — tax year 2026
The three tests, as answered
- Does the customer decide the amount? not answered
- Can the customer decline to pay it? not answered
- Is it a mandatory service charge or auto-gratuity? not answered
Answer the 3 remaining questions above for a result.
Watch out for this in your job: The coat check fee is not your tip. Where a venue charges $3 a coat, that charge is the venue’s revenue even if you collect it by hand — the qualifying tip is only what the patron adds on top of it, into the dish.
Educational estimate only, not tax advice. It runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere. The deduction is scheduled to expire after tax year 2028.
How this applies to coatroom and locker room attendants
The dish on the counter is the entire mechanism of this job. Small cash amounts, given at the moment something is handed back, repeated many times across an evening. Nobody counts it but you, no system records it, and the annual total is built entirely from single dollars — which makes a running note at the end of each shift not a bureaucratic nicety but the only evidence that will ever exist.
Golf and country club locker rooms run a different economy under the same code. The work extends beyond handing back coats to cleaning shoes, brushing down clubs, laying out towels and keeping a member’s locker in order, and the tipping follows: larger individual amounts, given by people who see you weekly through a season, plus a holiday envelope from regulars at the end of the year. It is strongly seasonal in northern clubs, with a concentrated few months and then nothing.
The charge-versus-tip line is unusually crisp here. Where a venue charges to check a coat — three dollars a garment is common — that money belongs to the venue even though you are the one collecting it, and it is not deductible to you whatever share of it you eventually see. What the patron adds into the dish on top is the qualifying part. In venues with free coat check the whole dish is voluntary and the analysis is simpler.
Washroom attending has become the most contested tipping convention in the country, and many venues have removed the position entirely rather than defend it. Where it survives, everything in the dish is unambiguously a gift: there is no price, the patron owes nothing, and declining costs them nothing. That makes it a qualifying tip in principle, though the practical amounts have fallen sharply as cash has.
The three tests, whatever your job
Paid voluntarily
The customer sets the amount and can decline to pay it.
Paid in cash or a cash equivalent
Card payments and mobile payments count.
Received directly or through a tip pool
Both routes qualify.
Questions
- Are coatroom and locker room attendants on the IRS tipped occupation list?
- Yes. Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants is Treasury Tipped Occupation Code 211, in the entertainment and events category. The regulations describe it as: Provide personal items to patrons or customers in locker rooms, dressing rooms, or coatrooms.
- What is the most common reason coatroom and locker room attendants lose the deduction?
- The coat check fee is not your tip. Where a venue charges $3 a coat, that charge is the venue’s revenue even if you collect it by hand — the qualifying tip is only what the patron adds on top of it, into the dish.
- How much of my tips can I deduct?
- Up to $25,000 per return, whatever your filing status. The cap applies first, then the amount is reduced by $100 for every $1,000 of modified adjusted gross income above the threshold for your filing status.
- Does a mandatory service charge count as a tip?
- No. A mandatory service charge or automatic gratuity is not a qualifying tip, and the final regulations confirmed this explicitly. It does not qualify even when the customer cannot decline it — a qualifying tip has to be an amount the customer chose to give.
Related occupations in entertainment and events
- 201
Gambling dealers
You deal or run a table game — blackjack, craps, poker, roulette — and handle the chips and payouts.
- 202
Gambling change persons and booth cashiers
You handle change, chips and payouts on the casino floor or from a booth.
- 203
Gambling cage workers
You work the casino cage — cashing out chips and tickets, handling credit and check cashing, balancing the drawer.
Occupation data transcribed from T.D. 10044 — final regulations on occupations that customarily and regularly received tips, Treas. Reg. § 1.224-1(h) table 1, last verified 2026-09-08. Read the regulations.