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No Such Thing As a Tax-Free Lunch At Google?
theodp writes "In search of the best corporate cafeteria in the world, Gourmet Live's Tanya Steel visited the Googleplex, where she found Petaluma chicken cacciatore, porcini-encrusted grass-fed beef, whole-wheat spaghetti pomodoro, and Parmesan-creamed onions on the menu in one of the search giant's 25 cafes. So, must all good things come to an end? The WSJ's Mark Maremont reports that it's debatable whether Silicon Valley's daily fringe-benefit meals are taxable, and the issue is now on the IRS's radar. 'What would a food tax on Google's meals look like for the average employee?' Maremont asks. 'Assuming a fair-market value of between $8 and $10 per meal, a Googler chowing down two squares a day could get dinged for taxes on an extra $4,000 to $5,000 a year.' That'd be just fine with UF tax-law Prof. Martin J. McMahon. 'I buy my lunch with after-tax dollars,' said McMahon. 'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'"
On the otherside, an employer or contractor can 'expense' their meals if it's business related. However, I believe there is a percentage cap, based on overall income.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The missing trillions in corporate tax evasion! Maybe they should setup the catering company overseas and get a *contract* at GoogleKitchen?
I'm pretty sure that Google's advertisers pay Google to pay for the free meals for those Google employees. Without prejudicing any other case for equitable treatment, just because someone isn't paying taxes doesn't mean they're robbing you. It's the fruits of their own labor. In the absence of laws to the contrary, is Google not entitled to dispose of their money as they see fit?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So, I can't imagine that most Google employees are eating TWO meals a day there - maybe a meal and a snack. So, the benefit is probably $2500/yr or so.
And that is gross income. Even if their marginal rate is 35% they'd only pay an extra $800 in actual taxes on that.
If you gave me a choice of paying for typical cafeteria fare at a typical fortune 500 at typical rates for cafeteria food (ie mediocre food at premium prices), or paying an extra $800 in taxes so that I could have gourmet food at lunch every day (just grab whatever you want and stop by for ice cream in the afternoon if you have a craving), I think I'd take the gourmet food. I pay way more than $800/yr on lunches already most likely, and I don't eat like they do at Google.
A cheese steak, drink, and mushy fries at work costs me $7.50. Gourmet food for $3.50/meal in taxes - sign me up! Oh, and if your marginal rate is lower then it is even cheaper.
I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about ....
So, if lunch is taxable, does that mean free coffee is taxable? Free snacks? Free water?
I couldn't read the article. Does Google get a tax break for feeding it's workers or does it pay full price for the food it gives to them? Where is the lost tax revenue?
Hey, I have to pay to use the bathroom in some places, maybe we should tax bathroom breaks?
Or, better yet, let's just tax breaks in general, because all the people who work too much are subsidizing those lazy bastards who take breaks!
Wouldn't it be just as valid to say that this is provided as a service to enable Google employees to avoid going home to cook their own lunch or to avoid having to eat a less-desirable cold bagged-lunch, keeping them more productive at work?
I bring my lunch 80% of the time. When I buy my lunch I don't like spending more than $5, sometimes upwards of $7 if I don't have a lot of choice in the matter. When I bring my lunch it probably costs $1.
If Google has hired on-staff the food prep staff, it'd be more analogous to how school lunches cost, which is to say that an adult lunch in this school system for faculty is about $4.00. If Google doesn't generally allow just anyone to eat in their lunchrooms, then I don't see how they can be held to a full retail standard.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So if I go home and eat my lunch ... no taxes since you don't get taxed on food (maybe in California, you guys are nutjobs ;).
But if I eat it at work, where a cook makes my meal instead of my wife ... that I get taxed for?
Lets see, whats better? Me driving home for lunch, wasting gasoline, road wear and tear and pollution ... or staying at work for lunch?
The UF tax law professor just needs to be shot. He's just a whining bitch. Its not like he has a real job, he's a fucking professor, he doesn't actually work anyway. Two classes a week that he sits in while his assistants do all the work or someone else lectures. String his ass up from a tree until he stops talking. No, I don't like lawyers, especially ones who like to whine about how they are treated unfairly while essentially doing nothing but draining otherwise useful resources from the world and our budget.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
In Canada, this is already going on.
We (as a country, and yes, I'll speak for my country here) tend to tax things that employees receive as part of doing their job. Like, income. Company car usage on personal business. Certain types of business accommodation perks.
Unless google is willing to open their cafeteria to the world, getting "free" meals as part of your job is, well, part of your job. I think most people can agree that the US tax system has a few loopholes - but why is it crazy to expect people to pay taxes on their income?
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
The government is very much like the mafia. They don't really care what you are doing most of the time. They just want their cut.
But hey, we pay all these taxes by providing jobs for the food vendors and salaries, etc.
That's nice. Pay me.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"'I buy my lunch with after-tax dollars,' said McMahon. 'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'"
How exactly do tax dollars go to fund the lunches at Google's cafeterias? Last time I checked, that money came from revenue earned by Google, through its business. You know, from working.
How would the government prove that a given employee is actually eating the meals? Do they have a swipe card that tracks them? What if they are bringing their own lunch?
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
Technically, if you get free parking from your employee (i.e. you don't pay to park at a parking garage because they pay for the spot), that is considered a taxable event. You are supposed to report that on your taxes.
This would be a similar event. You are benefiting by your employer covering the cost.
Whether the final ruling on this matter is considered the same remains to be seen.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
... and while we're at it let's tax free coffee, free snacks, hell even all that free water workers drink on break.
Even better, let's tax all time spent on break -- I'm sick of supporting lazy workers on break with my hard-earned-no-break hours!
Say the professor prefers tea & fills his teapot from his university's tap. Does he have an individual meter so that his usage is not coming out of the pocket of the rest of the faculty or the students? If a corporate lunch is an untaxed benefit shouldn't he have one for his tea? Shouldn't he also have one for the toilets he uses? How is his use of these common resources any different from free lunches -- or is it just a matter of time until this becomes the norm as well??
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Assuming google employees eat two meals at work and they are working 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, that's $10 a meal. Even steak doesn't cost that much, especially in bulk. The only taxable item is the food itself, which I humbly suggest costs $2 a plate in bulk.
You don't tax for running the cafeteria or paying the employees (well, other than the taxes those employees already pay). If you did, you'd have to pay tax for each time the mail department stuffed letters in your mailbox (yeah, I'm old, deal with it). You pay taxes on the goods you get to consume. So, we're talking more like taxes on $1,000, which sounds like a much better deal.
as well as any other "freebies" that Google provides to its onsite employees. Just think how much revenue the state could get if each Google employee's computer and office furniture were taxed at regular income tax rates!
I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees
Only in the most roundabout way. It's not like they're getting state funded lunches, they're just not paying a tax. Just like I don't pay a tax when I eat some raspberries that grew on my land. Of course the commissaries at Google probably pay a tax on the foodstuffs when they buy the bulk ingredients.
That's about what me and the wife spend at the grocery store for 3 meals a day for both of us all year! (We spend about $90~$110/week, and that's not always all food.) Assuming 33% tax, 2 meals 5 days a week, try $396 in taxes per person per year. And yes I've eaten at the Mountain View Googleplex which is just down the street.
Ask the restaurant owners going out of business on the north side of Mountain View what they thing of free food at Google.
I'm pretty sure the transaction between google and whoever is preparing the meals is still getting taxed. The only difference is that google is paying the bill and not the individual who gets the food.
will start turning up topmost for searches for "senile buffoon"
This guy is a tax-law Professor, so this can't be brushed aside as a mistake, so when he says 'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.' he is deliberately misleading.
The meals he is referring to aren't free (Google is paying for them) and they certainly aren't paid for by the government, so his taxes aren't supporting them one cent.
Tax is the government taking money off people (generally) against their will. If this Professor saw a mugger taking money off people in the park, would he claim that those lucky enough not to get mugged were being supported by those that were being mugged?
It's absurd.
Professor McMahon seems to be wrong - he's not actually paying for the Google employees' lunches - but I am glad to see this issue getting brought up. Letting employees of big corporations skate around taxes by providing non-salary benefits is wrong on several levels. First is the blatant unfairness: why do Google employees get tax-free lunches when, someone else (say, for example, me) has to pay for my lunch with post-tax income. Also, I don't think we want to encourage people to become even more dependent on their corporate masters.
That’s a good analogy, but then why do I pay taxes for my benefits, like my pension plan?
Imagine a person A with a salary of $100k, and person B with a salary of $50k and benefits worth $50k (free meals at work, rent assistance, company car, airline tickets for personal use). Why should A pay more taxes than B?
Here in The Netherlands, I'm pretty sure your boss can't just give you "free lunch" as that would be considered "payment in kind" and it would have to be added to your income.
There's a natural tendency for employers to try to pay their employees in something other than money. As an employee, you are interested in your net income, i.e., if an employer can figure out a way to pay you something tax-free, they can save on taxes while keeping your net income equal. So an employer might think "What do my employees buy with their salary, and can we simply buy it for them instead, thus paying less tax?" Here come the company cars, the company computer, etc. I understand that the government has to put *some* rules in place - after all, what about a "company house"?
In the UK food served in company cafeterias is generally tax exempt, as long as the cafeteria is open to all employees. It's usually where management get their own "premium" menu that their benefit would be considered taxable.
As far as food in general, anything considered non-essential is usually subject to VAT (Value Added Tax) which is our equivalent of US Sales Tax. This leads to arguments as to what is or isn't essential, with the recent Pasty tax being a good example.
freakin' corrupt gubbamint, shit on the little guy while letting corporate malefactors walk off with the henhouse.
I'm so sick of the expression "cost the government". It's a weasel expression intended to convince people that all money belongs to the government first and they let you have some only after they've spent whatever they want. Bulldinky. Every day you hear about how things have gotten too expensive. Food? Too expensive. Coffee? Too expensive. Air travel? Too expensive. Higher education? Too expensive. Gasoline? Too expensive. Electricity? Too expensive. Insurance? Too expensive. Rent? Too damn high. Healthcare? Too expensive. Why the hell isn't government too expensive? IMHO, if the government got rid of baseline budgeting and actually reduced expenses across the board, those of us who pay for all that crap might not be hell bent on looking for every write-off under the sun.
The university, unless it uses well water, pays for its water like everyone else via the water taxes.
By the way: $10 of water is an ENORMOUS amount of water. $10 barely gets you a nice cheeseburger or salad in many US cities. Typical US household water bill is $330/year, according to a quick search.
Please help metamoderate.
You know who is getting a "tax free" "lunch" in the US?
Anyone who drives.
Those of us who don't drive are paying for all of you who do, because the gas tax in the US hasn't covered the cost of roads in decades.
I ride a bike; my bike produces zero impact on infrastructure. Your hulking SUV, on the other hand, causes quite a bit of road wear and tear because road wear is directly correlated to weight of the vehicle. That SUV also pollutes, requires gas, causes congestion, etc. None of which I do on my bike.
Yet curiously, an enormous amount of my property taxes and salary taxes go towards building the roads I'm not wearing down...and then I have idiots in SUVs blowing by me screaming out their windows that I should get off the roads because I don't "pay" for them.
Please help metamoderate.
what about a "company house"?
Since you don't own it and will eventually have to leave, what about it?
It's not fair to tax someone for the cost of something when they do not own it. It's also not fair to tax it as if you were renting it because who is to say you would not have chosen a much cheaper place to live if you had to pay rent?
The same goes for food. It doesn't make any sense to tax Google employees for food because you have no way of knowing how much of the free food they ate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can see the argument for that. Why can't you?
Because tax law holds that food & drink (& entertainment) provided for employee events for morale is deductible to the company and not taxable to the employee, as long as the events are open to all employees.
Obviously google has an interpretation that they want to use, that lunch every day at google is an event to bolster morale.
On the other hand, the IRS would like to say no, if it happens more than once a week, it's not such an event. Or, no, if there's not a set time during which every body comes, it's not such an event.
Does your company ever provide donuts for meetings? Should the value of the donuts show up as a taxable benefit on your W2? Coffee? Soda?
Why? Because you don't work at Google. Too bad, so sad. I get free water where I work. And free toilets. Do I have to pay taxes on that? You'd rather peopel be even more dependent on their federal government masters? No thanks.
That’s a good analogy, but then why do I pay taxes for my benefits, like my pension plan?
Simple answer, you shouldn't. Just cause government's scummy in one area, let's not invite it into others.
Tax every interaction between people. I believe even barter is taxable. What the hell, let's tax the exchange of words.
"If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet..."
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
First is the blatant unfairness: why do Google employees get tax-free lunches when, someone else (say, for example, me) has to pay for my lunch with post-tax income.
Jeez, take it up with your employer. Why do people feel that if they can't get ahead themselves, they need to try to take others down?
Careful with expressing such terribly libertarian viewpoints on Slashdot. You may get drone attacked. And you're darn right we should be looking for and using every write-off under the sun as long as it's there to be used legally. If you don't you're just giving away money to a mostly (by %) useless government.
So much foolishness... some workers pay $150/mo for parking at work, so those with "free" parking have to pay taxes on it? all those personal calls on company phones? some places have pay toilets, so I have to pay taxes on the men's room?, spring water at the fountain and free wifi? leave it alone... geesh...
AFAIK, meals provided to employees onsite by a company cafeteria, while on the clock, to reduce the time the employee has to take off from work, are normally NOT treated as a taxable benefit. If the employee could come in to eat for free on their day off, those meals should be reported.
The rules are clear if you are working on an oil rig or a deep-diving submersible --- any site so remote and secured that only your employer can keep you fed and housed and the costs are astronomical.
The five-star buffet in Mountain View?
That is taxable as income.
This is not a new issue. Although the concept of tech companies offering their employees gourmet catered dining is relatively recent, restaurants, hotels, bars, and other hospitality businesses have offered their staffs free meals since time immemorial.
In those cases, the US federal tax code allows a business to exclude the cost of meals from its employees' income only as long as the meals are eaten on the employer's business premises and they are provided "for the employer's convenience."
A company like Google might have a hard time proving the latter clause. A recent job posting for a "Food Experience Design Manager" would seem to suggest that mealtimes at the Chocolate Factory's over 120 cafes are designed as much for its employees' enjoyment as to bolster the bottom line:
As the Global Service and Experience Design Manager, you think about everything that goes into how Googlers interact with food. From our ever-popular micro-kitchens to multi-course meals at cafes, the design, layout and experience of eating at Google should promote healthy habits and social serendipity for Googlers. Our food venues need to support the healthiest, happiest workforce on the planet.
Similarly, Yahoo! started offering its employees free food last August, with a spokesperson telling El Reg that the move was "part of how Yahoo! looks after its talent." But meals offered as a recruitment or retention tactic don't count as being ''for the employer's convenience'' either, according to experts.
Tax man to take a bite of tech employees' free meals?
How is this any different from asking why another employer pays their employees more than another? My employer provides a benefit to all employees that allows us to pay for daily transit costs pre-tax; is it unfair that not all other companies offer that as well?
LegendMUD
On the other hand, the IRS would like to say no, if it happens more than once a week, it's not such an event. Or, no, if there's not a set time during which every body comes, it's not such an event.
Memorandum: The company-wide morale building dining event will now run from 12:00:01 - 11:59:59. Anyone arriving at 12:00:00 will have to wait until the next event starts. As ever, these events will be held annually, to commemorate holidays like every day ending in "Y."
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
You may want to actually read your tax system laws before lambasting too deeply. You aren't taxed for items that are explicitely necessary in performance of your work duties. Nobody can work for 8 hours without going to the washroom or drinking water without undue care (and the cost structure is so ridiculously cheap, it'd be completely meaningless for the gov to tax it anyways). Food on the other hand is a huge amount of potential dollar value which makes it worth going after, and one could definitely argue that that you can live for 8 hours without food if you chose to (unless you have a pretty severe illness).
And as you mentioned, the prof's tea if he indeed had it provided by his university also falls into this category and he should probably remit it to the government for taxation at the end of the year, so lets say 2 cups a day for 260 days at 20c per cup == $104 of taxible income. Unfortunately for these Google folks, their free lunches are substantially higher than that.
Bye!
Who says "No Thanks" to a meal that they didn't have to pay for? Any college student will tell you the best meal they had was "free" not because of the food quality, but because it was free. I'm assuming Google just has a cafeteria that employees can just walk into and get a meal or two during any given day while they are working, and that this is an every day occurrence. I can honestly say, I'm a tad jealous, but I see that as a perk of working for that company. If the IRS is going to tax lunches, CEOs across the nation will have to start paying taxes for their elaborate lunches. But wait, so would every college student who didn't pay taxes on food they ate. Oh and what about all those free day care services some places offer or exercise room, shouldn't those perks be taxable also? Wouldn't this then also impact me going over to a friends house and receiving a meal from a party? I didn't pay for it so I wasn't taxed on it.
This is a slippery slope, and one that if pushed as taxable then it opens up a whole new can of worms. If Google is paying the taxes on the food and upon purchasing the food for giving away, wouldn't taxing the employees be double - taxation?
I'd love it if I could reap such awesome benefits, but I do not begrudge a Google employee from enjoying the perks of working for Google. I'm happy to learn that a company that large is still so generous to their employees.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Computer and office furniture are already taxed when Google purchases them for business use - they are owned by Google, used by the employee in the course of business.
If Google instituted a policy where Googlers *owned* their Google-purchased computer & office furniture, and were able to take that stuff with them when they left, then you bet your ass that would be a taxable event that the IRS could expect you to declare as income.
So many commentators misunderstanding what Professor McMahon is actually saying. Easiest way is to explain with an example:
Take 2 companies AlphaTech & BetaBusiness and an employee at each (we'll call them Alice and Bob).
Alice works at AlphaTech and earns $100,000 / year, but has to pay $10 for each of the meals she eats in the company cafeteria. Alice has ~2 meals a day giving a total 500 meals a year. She has to pay $5,000 per year for her meals out of her salary AFTER income tax, meaning that the amount of her pre-tax income that she pays is ~$7,000.
Therefore her relative income (after taking meals into account) is $93,000
Bob works at BetaBusiness and earns $95,000 / year but gets all his meals (each of which are valued at $10 each) for free in the company cafeteria. Bob also has ~2 meals a day and so gets 500 meals a year free.
Therefore his relative income (after taking meals into account) is $95,000.
Both employees have received compensation (including meals in the cafeteria) worth $100,000 yet Bob is paying significantly less tax than Alice, meaning that Alice is effectively subsidizing Bob's meals.
"dinged for taxes on an extra $4000-5000 per year." Not "pay an extra $4000 to $5000 per year in taxes."
If they are given $4-5k in food by their employer over the course of a year, the argument is that this is a form of income, and thus they should be paying taxes on the value of that food.
Kind of a reasonable argument, actually. If "things" aren't taxable income, then can CEO's request to be paid in cars, jets, and yachts, and avoid all income taxes?
What a fucked up place. Long, long ago, I was a proponent of "My country, right or wrong."
As I grew older that changed to distaste and then disgust with home and foreign policies.
Of late, it's become a cancer eating at my soul. What the fuck happened to America?
When I went off to the military I was so damned naive that I wish I could bitch slap my younger self.
I am activating my ace in the hole, which is a dual-citizenship courtesy of my immigrant parents (yes, they arrived with residence visas in-hand and obtained green cards).
There's nothing here worth saving.
Consider a world where cash salaries were taxable but employment benefits weren't.
That would create the incentive for companies to provide as much of the compensation package as possible as a benefit and as little as possible as cash salary. That would push up the rates of taxes on what little cash salary most people had left making the pressure to live in company housing, drive a company car eat company food and generally have your entire life focussed round the company you work for even higher.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Also, I don't think we want to encourage people to become even more dependent on their corporate masters. Reply to This Share
Correct. We should become more dependent on the government instead.... sarc....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If your company provides health insurance benefits, you don't get taxed on that income either. People who don't have that benefit pay with after-tax dollars. I know people who get virtually all of their health insurance costs, other than deductibles and copays, for their entire families, paid for by their employer. For a family with 3 or 4 kids, that can add up to additional untaxed income that's close to what the average US household income is.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Who determines "fair market value"? Pretty much every office in the country (including most government offices) have coffee machines. Some do pastries too. Do we tax on the free cuppa joe? What is fair market price? $4 Starbucks drinks?
How about going after corporate tax jurisdiction shopping instead of trying to milk the employees even more.
Because without laws that keep things fair like this, people abuse the system. What happens when Google decides to reduce salaries but pay your mortgage. They drop it a little further and pay for your car. What's the problem? It's a nice benefit, stop being jealous. But now the tax base just went down. It's just Google. Well, if that's the status quo, then it won't be just Google. Pretty soon, companies are skirting around taxes by giving employees tax free benefits in lieu of salary. Which leaves those still paying taxes on their salaries holding the bag of those who aren't.
Did he bother to google (heheh) the IRS Publication for this? (warning, PDF). Scroll down and:
The fair market value of meals or lodging furnished to an employee by an employer may be nontaxable to the employee. IRC Â119 provides an exclusion for meals and lodging under certain circumstances. Cash provided for meals is not excludable under this Code section; however, under certain circumstances cash can be excluded as a de minimis fringe benefit. IRC Â119
And a few other paragraphs clarifying this seem to indicate that Google and all the other Valley companies that do this are following the rules just fine. Sheesh! I'm not even a lawyer and certainly not a friggin' professor of such.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Doesn't understand the fallacy of the statement 'I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'
The work is surely doomed.
So, why is the argument to tax the free lunch rather than remove taxes from your pension plan?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Thanks for feeding your employees. This results in less traffic on crowded Bay Area roads at lunchtime and less pollution in the air, thus saving taxpayers time and money.
Jeez, some people...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
NT
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Consider the following perks at my workplace: Onsite gym Popcorn machine Tea/coffee machine Few other (small) nice odds and ends Should I be paying taxes on what those items would cost me if I had to pay for them? I think not. I accept that those items cost my company money, which is results in a slightly smaller paycheck. Don't ding me twice by lowering my pay AND making me pay taxes for the value of these items.
I don't think you understand how non-cash taxable benefits work, and this argument isn't about requiring a blanket-tax on all the non-taxable benefits. You only pay taxes on the benefits you receive. If your company chooses not to track individual usage (or includes it in your contract), it is employer freedom and choice, not a tax issue.
Changing the tax laws because you don't like the way your employer treats you is an over-reaction. You're not forced to take a job that provides non-cash taxable benefits that you don't want.
Changing the tax laws so they apply in an even manner to everyone? That is a goal that everyone should support, and I don't understand your opposition to it.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Honestly? The same thing happens to pre-tax spending on health insurance, and this guy is griping about *lunch*
This whole thread is quibbling about taxing pennies on employee lunches, when Google works overtime to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars on its profits. I'm surprised that not one person in this thread has noticed the disparity. Did you notice?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-profits-offshore_n_1901398.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/irs-auditing-how-google-shifted-profits-offshore-to-avoid-taxes.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-sheltered-in-no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html
Really. Buy some perspective.
sc
It's funny--or sad--200 some comments on this story and not a single 1 of the >3-rated comments has even a half assed reflection of reality.
According to federal tax law, many employee benefits are taxable, some exactly the same as income. I don't know the details. But nothing about Google or it's employees being taxable for those free lunches surprises me. Remember the 'three martini lunch' a la Mad Men? Businesses were expensing meals left and right and deducting it all. That went away in the 80s. Now things are different. Get over it.
A few comments are calling the tax prof a "whiny bitch" or something similar. Hey, here's a fun experiment, go violate federal tax law. Let us know how that works out for you.
That's probably the most enviro-unfriendly food on the planet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Your office is likely required by law to provide water and restrooms-- totally different.
Has been giving outrageous perqs to brokers for decades. It's fairly cynical, as it is meant to keep them at their desks as long as possible. I'm sure that Google has a similar intent.
This includes gourmet (free) catered meals to your desk, free childcare, free laundry service, free gyms, free late-night car service, etc.
Do these employees pay taxes on these benefits?
Also, it keeps loose lips away from the neighborhood feeding troughs.
In France it's not mandatory but most of the companies give you some money for food, or give money to the company's restaurant where employee can eat
The current rule is no taxes for noone if company give you up to 5.29€ knowing that the company can't pay more than 60% of your meal ( to ensure that they give you coupon that most of the time 50% paid by employee and 50% company )
If the company wants to pay full meals they can. But the company have to pay some extra taxes and declare to the that the employee receive some advantage. So the employee will have to declare it too ( like everything your company give you free for your personal usage car, gas, tickets, phone... everything is converted to some value not necessarily the full value )
Of course for some work where you have to be on the workplace, or volunteer work the company can pay everything without problems.
The thing is that in your examples the law is pretty unambiguous. If the company is paying for your home and car and they aren't used for work, it's considered employee income and is subject to regular income tax. Meanwhile, food given to regular employees at work, like factory worker or doctor eating at the on-site cafeteria, or the soldier in the field eating an MRE, is normally not counted as a benefit for taxing purposes. The idea behind the exception was that the employer couldn't afford to give the employee time off to leave facility to eat. The question is whether or not this rule should also apply to tech workers who have a more flexible schedule.
If you buy some photos to decorate your office walls - that's tax-deductible and will reduce your profit. But if you buy some very expensive art work, your taxman won't accept it. Now take a look at Google's lunch: 'normal' lunch is tax-deductible, but award-winning five-star cuisine is not. Prof. McMahon thinks that Google's cuisine has become too expensive to be tax-deductible.
Those are non cash "benefits" that the employees recieves that they should be taxed on as well right? How about security for the building, usage of a phone, wireless internet, an elevator, and a paved parking lot?
Professor McMahon seems to be wrong - he's not actually paying for the Google employees' lunches - but I am glad to see this issue getting brought up. Letting employees of big corporations skate around taxes by providing non-salary benefits is wrong on several levels. First is the blatant unfairness: why do Google employees get tax-free lunches when, someone else (say, for example, me) has to pay for my lunch with post-tax income. Also, I don't think we want to encourage people to become even more dependent on their corporate masters.
Fuck you.
Unless you are independently wealthy, you are dependent on your corporate master, whether they feed you or not. So quit whining, bitch.
Sincerely,
All of us who get free lunches (Google et al)
That would create the incentive for companies to provide as much of the compensation package as possible as a benefit and as little as possible as cash salary.
We don't even need to consider this intellectually, when we can just go look at the US health care system. About a third of the cost comes from untaxed health care benefits which have been used in place of wages.
...quick, we must tax them so I feel better about myself.
I understand the sentiment but you're going after a small, low-value proposition. The cost of the extra paper and account time would dwarf the gains. Also, $10 market value?? Maybe if you have a profit motive, but Google clearly does not here. In fact Google has every incentive in the world to make those meals as cheaply as possible (hello? They're FREE). Also the chef is on salary. Btw I also benefit from having salaried cleaners in the office AND SO DO YOU - is that a taxable benefit too? Or are we complaining here that any Google lunch is potentially disrupting the sale of a lobster dinner? In that case those meals are worth $30 to someone else. Let's apply even more bogus logic - each meal is worth $150 compared to someone eating at the Ritz. Google is clearly robbing the Ritz of $300/day per employee. This must stop!
You can invent any arbitrary rule you like to punish people you don't like. Someone is bitter.
So, if I get taxed for my lunch at work, does that mean it's double-taxation for my sewer bill at home?
'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'
Oh bull****! I disagree that meals should be taxed as benefits, for anyone. What's next, tax homeless people for their soup at the shelter?
Proverbs 21:19
What with all the money we're in the hole, why hasn't anyone yet brought up the possibility of taxing religious organizations?
I'm sure they'd like to help.
That'd be just fine with UF tax-law Prof. Martin J. McMahon. 'I buy my lunch with after-tax dollars,' said McMahon. 'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'"
The other side of the argument is that those google employees, like most highly paid STEM workers create wealth with their work and with their spending (teh the true trickle down economics), wealth that the whole nation, including said Professor benefits from. That wealth more than compensates the complete and absolutely minuscule, if ever detectable and completely relevant "tax burden" unfairly placed on top of the "others".
Seriously, go to the cry-me-a-river department and send me a violin-shaped postcard when you get there.
Those perks provided by Google are a business expense; the items utilized to make those free lunches were already taxed; employees involved in making such things were already taxed, and Googlers, being the highly-paid employees they are, are already taxed in our supposedly progressive federal tax system (not to mention the additional state taxes.)
On very absolute terms that borderline ideological fanatism, yes, maybe we need to tax those free lunches in the name of fairness and bunnies.
On the other hand, there are so many more pressing taxation issues that need our immediate attention that putting even a micro-second of attention to THIS, it is both a function of the spiteful dysfunctionality of the IRS, and entitlement pettiness for those who are actually clamoring for it.
Get your goddamed taxation priorities in place. I'm all for tax reform - tax capital gains and income equally, close loop holes, simplify the tax code so that we either have a flat tax system or a true scheduled tax system, provide incentives for inshoring, etc.
To focus on this is like worrying about a pimple on your head while being terminally ill with brain cancer.
Moot point. We will have a flat tax (like Russia) system in five years, all thanks to Bitcoin. I got my first bitcoin today...
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Fringe benefit tax is the norm in Australia. In my opinion, FB should be taxed. The extreme example of Steve Jobs announcing he would renounce his salary shows this. It is otherwise just a loophole to reduce tax. But if you're going to start closing loopholes, there are bigger fish to fry.
Did you know that brain-dead Yanks allow their politicians to legally use insider-trading information to enrich themselves by speculating (using money actually provided by outside agencies seeking to buy political influence) on the stock-market. Dribbling Americans are told that it is GREAT when their politicians enter politics as people of moderate wealth, and leave as people worth hundreds of millions of dollars mostly gained via insider trading.
America is the only nation in the West where the members of parliament are actually above the law. The 'excuse' the American people are given is that the three branches of the control hierarchy (courts, president, parliament) need to be on the same level, so clearly the courts cannot be allowed to be above parliament. Of course, to be 'above the law', the lawmaker has to be acting in his/her official capacity, and insider trading has ALWAYS been defined as a political right in the USA.
It can be a GOOD thing when a company provides its employees with food. Clearly, it can also be an abuse (like when Obama and his cronies get to shovel free food into their mouths that are worth more by the forkful than an average American earns in an hour). The decent answer is simple. There should be a threshold limit (say 5 dollars) that triggers taxation. If the company can provide a meal at 5 dollars or less (actual cost- not what the same meal might cost in a retail environment), the taxman should butt out. Above this threshold, and the meal should be seen as 'income'. Workers should ALWAYS be able to eat 'at cost'- the taxman should not be allowed to tax meals at a retail value.
"The Greater Good" should be the guiding principle. Basic decent meals at a place of work should NOT be seen as a great privilege. And again, why do you Americans allow your filthy politicians to indulge in insider-trading? The owners of Slashdot think this is a GOOD thing. The stories they choose to highlight here show they think you are sheep to be controlled and manipulated.
To some extent, taxes are zero sum. The government has an operating expense it has to meet and imposes taxation to meet its expenses. Those who shelter their income from taxation boost the tax paid by those unable to shelter their income as the government raises marginal rates to meet their revenue needs.
Google takes a holistic approach to employee compensation, which includes workplace benefits such as free meals, since it makes the job more attractive than cash alone might.
This amounts to an employee benefit of more than a de minimis value (like, say, free coffee or sodas), which makes it more like income for the employee, which should make it a taxable compensatory benefit.
So when a Google employee gets income in the form of meals without paying income taxes on it, they are in effect sheltering their income from taxes and shifting the tax burden to taxpayers not receiving tax free meals.
If getting lunch from your employer is a taxable benefit, doesn't this mean that an employee bringing their own lunch could write it off as a business expense? I figure that lunch + coffee + snacks runs about $10 per day on average. I could use another $2400 in deductions.
26 USC 119 - Meals or lodging furnished for the convenience of the employer
(a) Meals and lodging furnished to employee, his spouse, and his dependents, pursuant to employment
There shall be excluded from gross income of an employee the value of any meals or lodging furnished to him, his spouse, or any of his dependents by or on behalf of his employer for the convenience of the employer, but only if—
(1) in the case of meals, the meals are furnished on the business premises of the employer, or
(2) in the case of lodging, the employee is required to accept such lodging on the business premises of his employer as a condition of his employment.
the cognitive dissonance here is astounding. Ayn Rand herself, blessings upon her name, wrote TANSTAAFL .
Wasn't that Heinlein?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Google wants happy, loyal employees. Perhaps we should be asking why more employers don't treat their employees like that. Decrying a company for unfair labor practices because they are perceived to treat their employees poorly by providing low wages, inadequate or no benefits, and poor working conditions is understandable. But becoming upset at an organization that goes above and beyond for their employees sends the wrong message.
If being kind becomes taxable, we'll soon see whats left of kindness disappear.
And it's not a matter of dependence. Certainly it's a small percentage of employees, if any, at Google's headquarters that truly cannot afford food. If Google stopped this program today, there would be no employees found dead at their desks due to starvation. Though some employees would likely be found at other companies soon after as they would perceive to be Google as a less enjoyable place to work.
It'll benefit the employees. Freebies are there to help have to pay you less. Taxes will help put things in perspective and employees might expect realistic wages for realistic hours.
Also if Google wants to avoid paying their taxes then it's only fair the IRS shits all over their freebies to help make up for the money they're hding away.
You don't generally pay taxes on the raw food used to prepare meals.
Maybe not where google is, but in Missouri, we certainly do -- well unless you have food stamps or EBT.
I've worked many years in a restaurant as a waiter, and my wife has moved up from working as a server to a manager in the restaurant industry. Did you know many restaurant employees have employee meals? These are either discounted (50% typically) or free meals, and sometimes free fountain drinks also. If Google employees have to report the meal as income, does that mean the servers (who in my state make $2.33 an hour plus tips) have to report the 50% discount as income also? Additionally, almost every manager gets free meals during their work shift - so do they have to record those? What of free fountain drinks - do you charge one per shift, or is each soda refill a full drink charge?
I understand that some people are upset that they pay in post-tax dollars while others are getting a free perk. I don't get a company car - but should those that do be charged the lease value as income when they are provided with one? If a company provides you a uniform, do you pay taxes on it as if you earned the money to buy it? If you make personal printouts or use a company computer for personal activities, if you are provided a company mobile phone and free plan, or any other of the "perks" a job provides, does that have to be counted as income?
Again, I understand you are upset. However, if a company wants to give their employees a perk, I think it should be. If a company is required to report food given to an employee as income in goods to an employee, then it should apply to every little perk given and not just food. In other words, take a pen home, then be taxed on that income - which would mean a much more totalitarian system at work to monitor every little thing every employee does.
It is as tax goes up to cover the short fall so people working for less generous employers pay more tax relative to a Google employee
Both terrible examples.. because the dessert cups were paid with after tax dollars, and the dinner was also paid with aftertax dollars. Only in the Google example is someone receiving a gift that was paid for with before-tax dollars... meaning no tax was paid on it at all by anyone.
Its a benefit in kind aka part of your wages but one that you avoid paying income and social security tax on - and the USA is historically very hard on free riders at work.
Would you describe anger at Google an others avoiding tax by using offshore tax havens as jealousy its a similar argument.
Because those tax dollars gained will feed 2,000,000+ starving people in America.
Note sarcasm.
If Google lunches were truly free, open to the public, then it can be argued it's not employment benefit/compensation - merely a charitable expense for Google. But if one needs to be a Google employee to get Google lunches, then the lunches are clearly compensation for employment, and it stands to reason that it should be taxable as such.
Yes I believe you are correct. "The moon is a harsh mistress" was the first time I've seen TANSTAAFL in writing. On a side note, I love that book and I would not be surprised if Google started from the concept of the computer Mike in that book.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
If I were eating like that every day (and I googled what the googlers gnosh on, and yummmmm), I would need to be rolled to the workstation with a hand cart/fork lift, would need a chair that can accommodate my non-girlish figure, and would need to think about taking a vacation involving rowing from Los Angeles to Hawaii and back, every year. The last place I worked, I had to brown bag it, and eat at my desk because as 'mere IT worker', I didn't have access to the kitchen (not even the fridge to keep my brown bag cold). If I wanted sandwiches that weren't at room temperature, I had to bring a little cooler (Actually I brought them in an insulated lunch bag). That worked well in the winter, where the temperature at my desk hovered between 10 and 15C, but not so much in the summer, where the temperature at my desk hovered between 35 and 39C. I am *so* glad I don't work there anymore.
CEOs get all these major benefits and barely anyone looks twice, even if it major, multi-million dollar, benefits.
Now we have actual rank and file employees getting a decent benefit and we are actually complaining.... wtf.
I have no problem with everyone in a company getting a benefit, especially something like this. I DO have a major issue when only the ones at the top get the benefits.
What next? Complain about disabled soldiers getting tricare for injuries sustained while serving but having no problem with congressman getting free healthcare for life after only 8 years for everything, even cosmetic surgeries?
It wasn't the first time Heinlein was wrong (even though my sig quotes him when I'm logged on). I rented a house three years ago. Last year I discovered that the tree in the front yard is a nectarine tree, it was full of fruit all summer. No free lunch? Bullshit! Not only did I get free fruit, but neighbors, friends, passers by did as well. Free food for everyone! I should be taxed because a tree grew un my yard all by itself?
"No such thing as a free lunch" isn't to be taken literally; it's a warning about salesmen.
How about "money doesn't grow on trees?" All of the Minute Maid corporation's money grows on trees, as does the income of any orchard grower.
Money-worshiping Randtards are dumber than boxes of rocks, IMO (or rather, they hope you're stupid enough to swallow thie bullshit). Their mantra is "free is worthless." Yeah, tell the farmers that don't get free rain that rain is worthless. Tell anyone who has to breathe to live that free air is worthless.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Just send the IRS 35% (or whichever percentage is appropriate for your bracket) of said income once you've gotten it. Most of USC title 26 is a load of crap anyways.
First off, I haven't worked régularly in the US for 30 years so my local taxes are not what you thought.
Secondly, my muslim collegues go without food & water all day for a month every year so in real terms neither is neccesary in 99% of all jobs.
Lastly, while i do not contest that employers in the US must be constrained to make toilets available, to my knowledge, there is no constraint on this being free, so I see no substantive difference between a free lunch & unmetered acces to water for sanitary purposes.
Our major difference of opinion seems to be that you think that free lunches are an exception that it is normal to eliminate as hidden benefits according to current tax laws in the US, whereas I see it as the sign of future micromanagement by pin headed tax assessors that should be fought against.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States
According to Wikipedia:
Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia are the only states that levy sales tax on groceries. So, yeah, Americans don't generally pay sales tax on food used to prepare meals seems about right.
The revolution will be mocked
The question of whether or not meals furnished by an employer to an employee are a form of compensation that is taxable income to the employee is neither new, nor difficult.
The issue was determined by litigation before WWII and in 1954 the rule that had evolved was added to the Internal Revenue Code as Section 119:
"There shall be excluded from gross income of an employee the value of any meals ... furnished to him ... by ... his employer for the convenience of the employer, but only if -- ... the meals are furnished on the business premises of the employer ..."
The IRS issued a written interpretation of this provision with several examples almost 50 years ago.
Examples of tax free meals include those furnished a remote construction site camp and those furnished to hospital workers who need to stay on site in order to be available for emergency calls. The following example is not tax free:
"A manufacturing company provides a cafeteria on its premises at which its employees can purchase their lunch. There is no other eating facility located near the company's premises, but the employee can furnish his own meal by bringing his lunch. The amount of compensation which any employee is required to include in gross income is not reduced by the amount charged for the meals, and the meals are not considered to be furnished for the convenience of the employer."
Without more research into the facts and circumstances of Google and its employees, I think that the above example would control their situation, and that the meals would be taxable income to their employees.
BTW: The IRS does not consider coffee, donuts, and soft drinks served at meetings or in break rooms to be taxable income in most situations
These rules are derived from the basic interpretation by the Supreme Court and the IRS of the phrase "income from whatever source derived" used in Amendment XVI to the Constitution and in the Internal Revenue Code. These rules have been consistent during the century since Am. 16 and the Income Tax were adopted.
I have spent some time and effort in researching and reading ideas on tax reform over the years since I first began to study the income tax 40 years ago, and I have not seen anything that would result in a change to this rule that would make meals non-taxable in all circumstances.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Two things: first, the tax is on the value of the food, not the cost of the ingredients e.g. what that food would cost in a restaurant. Second, the article gives a figure of $4000 to $5000 taxable income a year, not $4000 to $5000 more tax a year.
The IRS (taxing authority for Google's main campus) has a taxable fringe benefit guide that covers this type of thing. If the benefit, in your example the tap water for tea, is of minimal fair market value, then it's not taxable. Donuts at a department meeting, a company picnic for lunch one day, your boss buying a few workers pizza late one evening when they are putting in overtime to finish a project, etc.
If the business furnishes the meal for the EMPLOYER'S convenience, then the cost of the FMV of the meal doesn't get included as part of wages. Examples of this from the above document would be a ferry's worker's meal as they can't just pull the ferry over to let the workers have their lunch break. Or a firefighter who has to be on call and can't step away for a meal. While Google could probably claim that some of their workers are critical in nature and can't leave the premises should an emergency arise, I don't think you could argue that ALL employees fit that category.
So, is this any different that the govt. wanting to tax your parking space at work? Not that I agree with it, but the concept seems the same...it's subsidized by your company, so you don't have to park on the street (maybe avoiding meters).
Just another day in Paradise
On your own link, 18 of the 53 states listed (34%) showed sales tax on groceries. You can consider 66% as qualifying for "don't generally" status if you want, but I would go with at least 90%
In Oct 2000, a regional tax office in Poland declared, and fined companies for tax evasion, that free software products are a gift, and thus users need to pay the gift tax, using "leading commercial products" as a basis for valuation. In that particular case, they valuated Linux based on Windows NT Server, and Star Office on Microsoft Office.
During appeals, the Ministry of Finance initially declined any explanations, then after a long time finally said that in this case no tax is due, yet any schemes of gratis distribution "need to be decided on a case by case basis".
Sources (in Polish): 1, 2.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Sure, the Occupy movement folks were largely just clueless, angry people with a plethora of different reasons and beliefs. As long as you get a critical mass of people to complain about things under a common name, it will get media coverage and people will talk about it.
Much more important to me is the fact that yes, I *do* want to see big cuts in "social programs". There's absolutely no reason most of this can't be coved by private charities. (Look at how much money the typical charitable organization brings in right now, AFTER people are already taxed on their incomes -- and yet how small a percentage of what they bring in is even spent on the issues at hand! There's lots of room for more efficient charities, and evidence they'd have plenty of funding to get the job done if people could bring home more of the money they earn, instead of having a chunk taken from them before their checks even get cashed!)
I also want to see cuts in military spending and even public schools (because I'm sick and tired of the philosophy that simply throwing more money at a school will magically make it teach kids more effectively).
when I was in college/grad school the cafeterias were not subsidized. they were expensive, but very good and self sufficient.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You sound like a young guy who is oblivious to health care costs. Most medical expenses occur between the cold/flu type stuff and the catastrophic. You will be a burden on the rest of us for your poor planning/insight if given your way.
1. there's no such thing as health insurance for cheap. you're looking at $10K/yr and up for a family for basic coverage. If you want extensive coverage or have existing conditions, you're paying 2x or 3x this amount...if you're even insurable.
2. nearly everyone will have catastrophic health care problems. it's just a matter of when. some happen to children, some young adults, some as old men.
3. my medical expenses in the past yr alone have been roughly $80K (about $6K out of pocket bc I have good insurance). And thats just for routine surgery, a baby, some dental work, checkups, and prescriptions. I mean shit, a CT scan alone is $5K. you think people can handle expenses like this?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
This was a great article. It covered all the angles: under what conditions free meals at work are taxable, whether free meals at tech companies satisfy these requirements, the basic economics of taxation, and whether this loophole is big enough to justify any investigation. And best of all, no snarky comments that imply "nerds" have no right to earn big salaries (these are actually wedgie triggers as I've mentioned before).
My take is that *any* benefit you receive from your employer is fair game for taxation. The exceptions in the law that the article discussed are very reasonable: they allow for cases where the meals, even though the employee benefits from them, are not being intentionally used as a substitute for cash pay. The professors wording could have been a bit better: it would have been simpler to say that he pays for his lunch with after tax dollars, so Google employees should pay the equivalent amount of tax.
What about the toilet tissue? Is that taxable?
That this is even a concern is just further evidence that income taxes are an affront to sane governance. Tax your bartering, hobbies, garage sales, office perks, etc, etc. It's insane, impossible to enforce, and massively burdensome. Funding government should not be this complicated. They should stick to things that are largely enforceable and/or have direct correlation to government services: - paperwork fees (to comp licenses, permits, patents, etc) - tariffs (to comp border security, trade depts) - corporate income taxes (to comp artificial, govt-provided existence) - sin taxes (to comp societal costs of jails, child services, health care, etc that are burdened by risky consumption) - property taxes (to comp infrastructure, police, fire, etc) Even sales taxes make far, far more sense than income taxes. They are much easier to enforce (fewer businesses than individuals) and encourage investment over consumption (good for economy and environment). And they are easier to make non-regressive than income tax (flat rebate for everyone and/or excluding groceries). Income taxes are the most prone to complication and thus loopholes. They are the most expensive to enforce and to comply with. They get nothing from tourists, who still cost the system, and also manage to complicate immigration policy (or at least the debate around it). Income tax is regressive, oppressive, and costly.
Imagine a world with medical technology where we could extend life for ever, with only 10% increase in medical costs for every additional year of life. Everyone who is non-suicidal would die broke. Now put in a safety net where you make everyone pay into the costs. Dystopia! And we are not far from it...
how is that possible? I mean assuming you work 48 weeks a year and 5 days a week this makes 240 meals a year (assuming again one meal a day). This if given prices are correct 2400$ (if you take 10$ a meal). SO where is this 4.650$ price tag? Even if you assume two meals a day this gives 4800$ let us assume 5000. If this is taxable income then tax cannot be anywhere around this sum or? I mean assuming 40% income tax which in US is probably not the case this would be then 2k$ not 4.6k$ or? Or is it still 1st of April today?
They didn't pay tax already on the money used to purchase them in the sense that they paid corporate income tax on the funds. Because the expense of buying the food and preparing it and cleaning up afterwards etc is written off as a business expense and thus isn't all Google's profit ... some of it is (depending on what tax bracket Google is paying) but some would be tax money that could pay for all the infrastructure Googlers and the rest of us use every day.
What would the actual cost of tacking, enforcing and general day to day cost impact be of this? Would we "the people" actually come out ahead by making sure that we're getting paid our fair share for the meals employers provide? Does this apply to a restraint worker that gets free food because it would have been thrown out anyway?
How about google sells it at a loss and charges tax, can they then claim a write-off? it's a little far fetched to claim you tax dollars are going to support "their lunches", you just don't get to tax the employees wages twice.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
You pay cash taxes for money that's earned. Send the IRS a packet of ketchup each time you eat a free lunch.
Memorandum: The company-wide morale building dining event will now run from 12:00:01 - 11:59:59. Anyone arriving at 12:00:00 will have to wait until the next event starts. As ever, these events will be held annually, to commemorate holidays like every day ending in "Y."
Exactly, there is, as far as I know, nothing in the law limiting how often you can have morale-building events. Annual Christmas/winter party, monthly party, weekly Friday afternoon beer bash, daily morning donuts--none of those are being questioned and it's a small step to daily lunch.
First is the blatant unfairness: why do Google employees get tax-free lunches when, someone else (say, for example, me) has to pay for my lunch with post-tax income.
Google is hiring: http://www.google.com/about/jobs/ If you want google to pay you with food, get a job there.
Also, I don't think we want to encourage people to become even more dependent on their corporate masters.
I work at Google. I am not dependent on them. I can get a job elsewhere if I want. Part of the reason I choose to work here is the free food.
If you want to encourage people to not depend on their employer, free food is not the thing you should forbid their employer to give them. You should ban payment in money.
There's nothing flamebaity about this post. Everything I see here is factual. No one denies the rich bastards hide thier income to avoid taxes or think us poorer folks are teet suckers. Hell, I think there was a slashdot story last week about it. It's obvious some of our resident Libertards have taken out the nerf bat and are wailing away on your karma. This should be stopped. Mod him back up. I ran out of mod points 2 days ago!
Posting anon to avoid the same fate as you.
I don't know which news sites you've been watching (ok I do) but when someone whines about someone getting a free ride and that they need to have something taken away and taxed, that is usually a fiscally conservative talking point and not "left wing tunnel vision." A left wing talking point would consist of not taking it away and taxing it but to tax everyone and give everyone "free lunch." Remember right wing is Makers vs Takers and left wing is Take from the Rich to Give to the Poor. I also don't think his outrage is faux perse, he's probably one of the few conservatives at his university (as you pointed out they do tend to be more liberal) and as we all know they are huge hypocrites since they suck off the gov teet as much as the poor folks do (he works for a state uni). Don't misunderstand me, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I think your post has scored what it deserves. I'm just pointing out that your default reaction was to blame the blue team when it doesn't appear to be their fault. Neither side has to make up things, there's plenty of real outrage to go around.
We know the newer taps on the top floor are safest, but a lot of labs buy bottled water or have very good filtration systems (parallel to the DI (deionized water)).
The main problem is that it's a fairly old building, and lab buildings are an incredible pain to renovate, but still. If people are going to be whining about the luxury academics live in, I have some fine whines of my own. Life was a *lot* comfier in industry -- I just got tired of selling sugar water colored rectangles.
IANAL, but I can't agree with this.
1) Providing free lunch is ordinary in MANY work environments. You don't get out enough if you can't see this.
2) Define necessary - I still see this as a case of the IRS having a massive entitlement complex to our money.
I would kindly suggest they go fuck themselves, and take their budget deficit and tax non-payment issues up with the people that make more than a million a year.
Raise their taxes by even 1-2%, and you can slash everybody else's bracket by up to 5%.
Because someone with mod-points decided that "I disagree" = "Flamebait"?
Happens all the time around here; though I think it is actually my first Flamebait mod :-)
And yes, you are correct, it was absolutely not intended as Flamebait.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Oh, fuck.
What about the country that pays an executive $400,000/year, while providing everything (housing, food, drugs, entertainment) as a "benefit"? Is that still reasonable? Clearly not.
FTFY. By the way, begging the question or no true scotsman (not sure which you were going for there) are just as fallacious as reductio ad absurdum, although I would say the GP was making more of a straw man argument.
Thank you for fixing that! Sure, it completely changes what I was saying (tax evasion, bad!), and supports a completely different point (money, bad!) about a completely unrelated issue (executive compensation, bad!) ... but you're not wrong, so that's good ...
Also, naming a logical fallacy doesn't improve anything. Not the conversation, not the ability of the other party to avoid them in the future - all it does is give the person who names them an inflated sense of self worth, through self-aggrandizing at the expense of others. I'm not saying that is what you did, but I'm also not not saying that is what you did. Oh, and I know that's a double negative, no need to mention it.
Consider a world where cash salaries weren't taxable.
Especially after you posted this crap 100's of times last month http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 but you forgot to submit that one as anonymous coward like you did all the others. You got played. You played yourself, moron.
If he is right, then the government should tax every single person who cooks in his/her private kitchen too (wait, we already did with food/gas/electricity tax, trash/garbage fee etc). Employers should be encouraged and rewarded for treating their worker bees nicely. This white-hair dude is just plain jealous that his employer doesn't pay for his meal. Instead of having the balls to complain with his employer, he turns around and bite someone else. I want to slap him with a wet fish.
At least online, americans complain more about how expensive their government is than about any other single thing. Despite their government being very cheap because it doesn't really do very much. So I don't know where you are coming from - Americans routinely express the idea that government is too expensive. Also, if taxes are due on an item but those taxes are not paid, then the government has lost funds the same way that you lose funds if someone legally owes you money and then doesn't pay it. That doesn't mean the government owns everything, it means that what the government owns and what you own is specified by laws and those laws include tax laws. What you actually want to say is that you a tired of the idea that the democratic system empowers elected officials to impose tax laws, which is all that is necessary to make sense of the expression "cost the government".
When I worked at "large aerospace company" I brought sandwiches to work and ate in the field office. Was what I paid for lunch-meat and bread taxable?
While the state of Louisiana doesn't charge sales tax on prepared food the parishes and cities can and do.
When our "elected officials" are being flown around on corporate jets with the help of lobbyists, is that also taxed? Worse, there is an implied reciprocation, for if you don't scratch my back in return, you are not going to get more "freebie". There is a huge "return on investment" on these perks.
Many years ago I worked for a very large organization. Employees were given free meal-tickets (tax free lunch). They were carefully distributed by the managers. Then the government stepped in and stated that the lunch was a taxable benefit.
Step2 was to purchase the meal-tickets for 35 cents each. Again the government stepped in and stated that the meals were being subsidized, as a meal in a fastfood could be a few bucks. Ergo, they wanted the organization to add the benefit to the salaries.
So, the organization sublet the cafeteria to a private organization that charged regular price and any taxes. The cafeteria became open to the public as a for-profit venture.
If anything is free, the government will find a way to tax it. That includes fresh-air.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The simple need to keep discussions that might stray on to confidential subjects cannot be encouraged off site.
The clever idea discussed at lunch and the price of lunch denied as a business expense no longer belongs to the company with clarity.
Tax code changes could reach into the lunchroom at the CIA, NSA, DHS, IRS home offices, even the Whitehouse.
An honest cash rate mandates that the service be open to the public.....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Has Mcmahon paid his taxes for all that free haterade?
the onions sound divine.