One of the most notable features of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed by the House early Thursday is a series of tax cuts exempting tips, overtime, and Social Security from taxes. The White House said no taxes on overtime and tips “makes good on two of President Trump’s cornerstone campaign promises and benefits hardworking Americans where they need it the most—their paychecks.”
The so-called populist tax measures have garnered headlines and won praise from Republican lawmakers, as well as unions representing police and firefighters. And lawmakers in 19 states from Massachusetts to Mississippi have proposed their own “no tax on overtime” bills this year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
What has received far less attention, aside from a legal blog or two, is that the Trump administration just made it more difficult for millions of American workers to earn overtime—and actually benefit from the tax measure.
The U.S. Department of Labor has quietly paused its appeals of a ruling by a Texas judge that reversed the Biden administration’s changes to the overtime rule—which expanded the right to overtime pay for 4.3 million salaried American workers. The rule had increased the salary threshold for overtime exemption from $35,568 to $43,888 on July 1, 2024, and then to $58,656 on January 1, 2025.
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor did not immediately return requests from Capital & Main for comment.
The rule was spearheaded by Biden administration Secretary of Labor Julie Su, who noted the irony of Trump’s tax proposal on overtime pay, telling Capital & Main: “You can’t benefit from ‘no taxes on overtime’ if you’re not even paid overtime.”
She added: “When you work longer hours, you should be paid for it. That’s why we expanded overtime pay to 4 million more Americans. This administration has walked away from that rule, showing yet again that you can’t have an administration of billionaires and depend on them to fight for working people. Cutting the number of workers eligible for overtime means less money in workers’ pockets.”
Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, called the tax measure a “gimmick,” noting that the Trump administration “is already making it easier to classify people as independent contractors, rather than employees, and they aren’t entitled to overtime at all.”
Trump’s allies in the House, including Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, have claimed that the measure could impact more than 80 million hourly workers. But in reality, only 8% of them are estimated to earn overtime pay on a regular basis, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.
“That Doesn’t Help Me”
Among those workers is Terri, a cashier at a Dollar Tree store in Brooklyn, who was nonplussed when asked about “no tax on overtime.”
“So what? That doesn’t help me. I don’t even get overtime, no matter how many hours I work.”
The workers who would benefit from the exemption tend to be employed in sectors such as manufacturing, mining, and public safety. One of the most vocal supporters of the measure is the International Association of Fire Fighters, whose members often work many hours of overtime a month.
“Firefighters already work 53 hours a week before even qualifying for overtime pay. That’s 35% more hours a week than the average worker. The proposal to eliminate taxes on overtime would bring meaningful relief to firefighters, helping them keep more of what they earn while working long hours to keep their communities safe,” Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said in a statement to NBC News.
The measure is estimated to cost some $866 billion over the next 10 years, per the Budget Lab at Yale.
And state measures could have a devastating impact on their budgets, hurting their ability to pay for essential services. In Alabama, which became the first state to exempt overtime pay from state taxes, the measure cost the state $230 million in the first nine months of 2024, cutting off millions in funding for the state’s Education Trust Fund, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In the end, exempting overtime from taxes “is not a real pro-worker policy,” write EPI’s David Cooper and Nina Mast. “Instead, it is a giveaway to businesses that would create new inequities in the tax code while expanding employer power and draining public budgets of resources for all the things—schools, infrastructure, safety, health—that workers, their families, and their communities actually need to thrive.”
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.