Cite as: 536 U. S. 238 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
the restaurant would owe additional taxes on the unreported amount, because the waiter's reported income of $46,000 falls below the FICA ceiling.
Second, Fior D'Italia points out that an aggregate calculation based on credit card slips can overstate the aggregate amount of tips because it fails to account for the possibilities that: (1) customers who pay cash tend to leave a lower percentage of the bill as a tip; (2) some customers "stiff" the waiter, leaving no tip at all; (3) some customers write a high tip on the credit card slip, but ask for some cash back, leaving a net lower amount; and (4) some restaurants deduct the credit card company fee from the tip, leaving the employees with a lower net amount.
Fior D'Italia adds that these potential errors can make an enormous difference to a restaurant, for restaurant profits are often low, while the tax is high. Brief for Respondent 9-10, n. 6 (asserting that an assessment for unreported tips for all years since employer FICA tax provision was enacted would amount to two years' total profits). Indeed, the restaurant must pay this tax on the basis of amounts that the restaurant itself cannot control, for the restaurant's customers, not the restaurant itself, determine the level of tips. Fior D'Italia concludes that the IRS should avoid these problems by resting its assessment upon individual calculations of employee tip earnings, and argues that the IRS' failure to do so will always result in an overstatement of tax liability, rendering any assessment that results from aggregate estimates unreasonable and outside the limits of any delegated IRS authority.
In our view, these considerations do not show that the IRS' aggregate estimating method falls outside the bounds of what is reasonable. It bears repeating that in this litigation, Fior D'Italia stipulated that it would not challenge the particular IRS calculation as inaccurate. Absent such a stipulation, a taxpayer would remain free to present evidence that an assessment is inaccurate in a particular case. And we do
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