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Could you tell me what is the opposite of the phrase pay under the table? For example:

The company pays their employees under the table.

Would it be natural to say pay over the table?

Dmytro O'Hope
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    In an awful lot of cases, it would be most natural to not bother specifying that the employees are being lawfully employed. ("I drank three cups of non-poisoned coffee yesterday.") It sounds like you've already identified that this is a case where you need to specify; just wanted to mention it in case it helps others. – A C May 13 '21 at 23:26

6 Answers6

117

A word that means the opposite of under the table and uses the same metaphor is aboveboard:
American Heritage Dictionary

adv. & adj. Without deceit or trickery; straightforward.
[Originally a gambling term referring to the fact that a gambler whose hands were above the board or gaming table could not engage in trickery, such as changing cards, below the table.]

Jack O'Flaherty
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    Above board is exactly the antonym to "under the table". This really should be the accepted answer. – CCTO May 11 '21 at 18:23
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    Above board is a bit more broad than under the table. It just means "legitimate, honest, and open" — so it contains the opposite of under the table, but also more. E.g., paying someone openly (i.e., not under the table) but fudging your payroll tax would not be above board. – Chris Bouchard May 12 '21 at 02:04
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    Used in a sentence: e.g. "All payments to employees are completely above board" (directly exchanging "under the table" for "above board" in the original sentence would sound unnatural to me, although I'd understand the meaning) – Steve May 12 '21 at 08:01
  • @CCTO, I'm happy this isn't marked as accepted. I would have no idea what someone means when they say this, where I would know exactly what keeping employees on the books means. The question asked about the opposite, but it also asked about what is natural, which this phrase is not. – user1717828 May 12 '21 at 15:01
  • For company–employees relation they might be similar, but I've heard "under the table" used more for corruption/bribery. "On the books" to me sounds mostly about accounting (with the consequence of paying full taxes). "Under the table" is not just how money changed hands but what for. For example, a company giving employees a bonus for posting fake product reviews is not "above board", even if that's part of fully disclosed & taxed salary... – Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin May 12 '21 at 17:34
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    Just want to mention that above board is completely natural, and would be seen more often then on the books in my part of the USA. – jmarkmurphy May 13 '21 at 04:01
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    "Board is a direct synonym for "Table". Paying "Bed and Board" means you get your accommodation and your meals in the price. – Paul_Pedant May 13 '21 at 15:53
  • Aside: "aboveboard", "above board" and "above-board" would all seem to be valid forms of this compound word. (The OED and ODO list it as two words.) – MrWhite May 14 '21 at 11:54
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There isn't a standard way of describing the method of payment, though I have seen "over the table" used occasionally. The best way of describing this situation is to say that the employees are on the books. According the the Cambridge Dictionary, this means that the employees are

officially employed by a company, or an official member of an organization, society, sports team, etc.:

The implication is that all payments to the employees are recorded in the correct manner.

JavaLatte
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    "On the books" is a standard way of describing it, since "off the books" is another way of saying "under the table". – user3067860 May 11 '21 at 21:22
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    @JohnDoe Someone who's paying on the books may still be trying to cheat people in other ways (they are not aboveboard)...and someone who's paying under the table may still be aboveboard with their employees (paying the employees fairly, but cheating on taxes). – user3067860 May 11 '21 at 21:22
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    I like the example sentence for on the books in the Cambridge Dictionary: There are 256 people on the books at the cement works. – bettyc0cker May 12 '21 at 03:16
  • over the table is not an idiom re payment. It could be used as a joke. – Lambie May 12 '21 at 13:33
  • @user3067860 But those are adding to the scenario. All we know is that there's a company, that they have at least two employees, and that at least two of said employees are paid "under the table". If all I heard was that something was "above board", I would definitely assume that nothing untoward OR illegal was going on. – John Doe May 12 '21 at 21:22
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    I'm surprised there's controversy here. "On the books" encompasses paying someone. If you pay someone "under the table", it means you're paying them but you're not putting it in your accounting records, i.e. "on the books". Aboveboard is a good answer and a fun expression and could certainly be used here, but this answer couldn't be more precisely opposite while still being delightfully colloquial. – Henry74 May 12 '21 at 23:15
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    @JohnDoe Yeah, that's what I mean. Above board adds to the scenario, since it means "nothing untoward". Whereas on the books just means not under the table, and doesn't say anything about other working conditions, etc. – user3067860 May 13 '21 at 11:16
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I would know what you meant if you said "pay over the table", but I've never heard it said before. I would say that someone was "paid legally" or "paid legitimately" if I needed to express this.

Cody
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Simply saying "taxed" might be useful in some cases.

For example, "Is this under the table?" "No, its taxed."

GC_
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It might be understood especially if contrasted with pay under the table informally, but there is no need for that because, in most contexts, the verb pay independently implies an honest and legal exchange.

I don't think it's common. You can use publicly, officially, law-abidingly instead to stress the legitimate nature of the payment.

Andrew Tobilko
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If we can understand the context as being in the United States, I would say:

The company pays their employees through W-2.

or

The company has W-2 employees.

Grammatically, this is wrong. But this is how people say it orally.

A more boring wording that is reserved for policies and compliance documents could be:

The company reports employee earnings using IRS Form W-2.

William Entriken
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    Actually, those sentences are not grammatically wrong - at worst, the first one is using a zero-article construction in the sense that W-2 is a proper noun. Same structure as "the company pays their employees through YouTube and Venmo" (note the zero articles). The second one is correct, it just uses "W-2 employees" as a compound noun where W-2 is the type of employee being paid. Just as it would be for "the company has helpdesk employees": helpdesk employees are a type of employee that the company employs! – user45266 May 13 '21 at 06:02