The whole game for a tipped employee is documented, reported income. A lender can only use tip income that shows up in a verifiable paper trail. Tips that never got reported to the IRS have historically not counted toward qualifying, no matter how much cash actually came home. The good news: most payroll systems now require tips to be reported even when they are paid out nightly, so for many servers and bartenders the reporting already happens automatically. Recent federal tax legislation changed the treatment of tips for workers under an income threshold, making a portion of tip income non-taxable. Changes like that tend to encourage more honest reporting, which helps on the mortgage side, since reported income is usable income. Tax law and the exact thresholds change, so confirm the current rules with a tax professional, and treat this as general information rather than tax advice. The key point holds either way: the income has to be reported and documented to count for qualifying. If your tips are pocketed and never show up anywhere, you would likely qualify more like a self-employed borrower with low reported net income, potentially through a bank statement loan that uses deposits instead of tax returns. That path exists; it just usually comes with different terms. Get your reported income and documentation in order first, then let us see what you actually qualify for in a free Roadmap conversation.