For clubs with servers, bartenders and bottle hosts who receive tips, and their accountants

The club paid FICA on every tip. Most of it comes back.

Barback works out Form 8846 month by month and employee by employee: only food and drink tips, less the part that just brings wages up to $5.15 an hour, at 7.65% — or only 1.45% above the social security wage base. It shows every line, prints the working, and will not mark the year claimed while a month is unfinished.

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Opens in this browser with an invented club already in it. No account, no email address, nothing installed.

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The problem

The credit is real. The arithmetic is not easy.

The employer’s share of social security and Medicare on reported tips for serving food or drink comes back as a credit on Form 8846. But dancers’ tips for dancing do not count, the $5.15 test runs month by month for each employee, and tips above the wage base carry only the Medicare part. Most clubs either skip it or leave money on the table.

Form 8846

the IRS credit for employer social security and Medicare taxes paid on certain employee tips at food and beverage establishments.

IRS →

$5.15

the hourly wage the tips must first bring pay up to; only the tips above it count.

1.45%

all that is creditable on tips above the social security wage base — $184,500 for 2026.

Will not mark a year claimed that is not finished.

Not a reminder. Claimed refuses, with the reason named, while the year is still running, any month is unfinished — tips with no hours, say — or there is no credit to claim. Tips that are not for serving food or drink never reach the form at all.

How it works

Staff, months, form

List the tipped staff

Each employee and their job. A job that is not food or drink service is marked “tips do not count”.

Fill in the months

Hours, wages without tips, food and drink tips and other tips, a year at a time. Each month shows what is creditable.

Print Form 8846

Lines 1 to 4, the working per employee, the tips left off and the wage-base split, ready for the return.

What it will never do

It works out the credit. It does not file it.

Barback produces the numbers and the working. The return is yours or your accountant’s.

No filing.Nothing is sent to the IRS. Barback prints the form’s lines and the working.

No payroll link.You type the monthly figures from your payroll records.

It is not an accountant.Your accountant signs the return. Barback hands them the working.

It never touches a payment.The licence is for software.

Pricing

Priced per club

A fraction of the first month’s credit.

Most clubs

One club

$99/year

One club and all its tipped staff.

Month-by-month $5.15 test
Wage-base split built in
Printable Form 8846 working

Accountant

$299/year

Up to five client clubs.

Everything in One club
A file per client
Export for the return

Yearly licence. Your bank statement says Barback Software. Refunded in full on request within 30 days. Your licence key is emailed to you within two working days of payment.

Checkout is our own bitcoin server, not a card processor — nobody we had to apply to and nobody who can close the account. The button takes you straight to it. Give your email address there — that is where your key is sent.

Questions

The ones we actually get asked

Do dancers’ tips count?

Not tips for dancing. The credit covers tips for providing, delivering or serving food or drink.

What is the $5.15 test?

Tips that only bring an employee’s wages up to $5.15 an hour — the federal minimum wage on January 1, 2007 — do not count. Barback applies it month by month.

How far back can we claim?

The credit can be claimed within three years, so an earlier year can be worked out the same way.

Is this tax advice?

No. It is the working your accountant would otherwise build by hand.

What do I actually get when I pay?

The demo on this page is the whole program, running on invented records. Paying gets you a licence key — one line of text, emailed to the address you give at checkout within two working days. Paste it into the program and from then on it keeps your own records. Until then, nothing you type into it is kept.

The key is checked inside the page, on your own machine. It never calls us, so there is still no account and nothing about your business goes anywhere. If you ever stop paying, your records stay exactly where they are, read-only, and Export still hands you every one of them.

Open the demo and see the credit

The invented club has two servers on the $2.13 tipped wage, a bartender whose tips all count, a bottle host above the wage base, and an employee dancer whose tips stay off the form. Barback works out every line.

Open the demo See pricing