A dad’s tradition of taking the first bite of his kids’ burgers—dubbed the “dad tax”—has caused hysterics online.
In the viral video shared by his wife, Kensie Webster, the young family is sat in the car having just received a burger order.
As dad Ethan Webster prepares to distribute the meals over to the little ones in the backseat, he takes a bite out of each one, declared by the video as a “dad tax”.
Kensie Webster, 28, and husband Ethan, 31, told Newsweek that the ‘dad tax’ started as a silly joke between the married couple, but now even their toddlers find it funny.
@kensiewebsterlife
“Whenever we go out and grab cheeseburgers, my husband and I will sneak a bite out of the kids burger and call it ‘mom or dad tax,’ ” Webster told Newsweek.
Webster said that her kids are too little to notice that a bite has been taken out of their burgers, which is helped by the fact that they never finish them anyway.
As he hands out a cheeseburger to each child, Ethan says, “Here you go, Bud,”—and the kids seem none the wiser to their dad’s cheeky antics.
“Now my husband and I fight over who gets to take the tax bite,” the 28-year-old added.
Webster, from Alberta, Canada, can be heard chuckling in the background, and wrote the video’s text overlay: “POV your kids don’t even know what a cheeseburger looks like without a bite because dad tax.”
The clip has garnered 3.7 million views on TikTok, with social media users commenting their reactions.
“The giggle ’cause mom definitely does the same when dad isn’t there,” one user wrote, to which Webster agreed.
The most-liked comment came from @srryitsalexis who wrote: “I’m 24 and I still have to pay dad tax when we eat together,” they joked.
Another user shared that the dad tax has been going “for generations” in their family and commented the relatable scenario: “Let me taste your cola to see if it’s different to mine.”
One mom calls this process “checking for poison” and commented that her 13-year-olds will wait for her to take a sip or a bite to see if she dies first.
Not everyone was delighted though, with a handful of viewers pointing out that the ‘dad tax’ would not be well received if their parents took a bite from their hamburger.
“Hated nothing more than this as a kid,” one user wrote, while another said: “I’m so glad my parents didn’t do this.”
One user who wrote that as a sibling, they’d notice how the dad took two bites out of the second cheeseburger: “That’d have one of us fuming,” they commented.
Webster told Newsweek that her kids don’t mention the fact that a bite has been taken from their burgers because she’s been taking the ‘mom tax’ since the beginning.
“Once they start finishing their burgers I’ll stop taking a bite, and I’m sure they will be like ‘wait, what is this full cheeseburger nonsense?,’ ” she added.
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