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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.'"
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.
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.
Well Google's searches obviously provide a benefit to us as users and we pay nothing for them, therefore we are getting income, which by the same argument should be taxed. Does that mean we owe the IRS every time we do a google search?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
An audit of search results could be embarrassing. Clearing your search history would be tax evasion.
They (statistically as a group) pay far more of their "share" than most. Certainly more than the professor who complains about having to subsidize their lunch - especially ironic while he eats lunch at a state-subsidized university's cafeteria.
As a Googler, I can tell you we ARE taxed for meals, to the tune of $4,650.00 in 2012. The company then pays a 'gross up' to make it a non-event for the employees. So all this complaining about 'free lunches' is entirely off-track, and this Professor of Law has demonstrated he doesn't know how to do basic research before talking.
Employment relationship? Are you fucking stupid? Since when is taxation based on employment only? The government wants to tax any and every transaction where net GAIN occurs. Win the lottery? Pay up. Found hidden treasure in the backyard, pay up. The school children example is absolutely relevant. If a child has a net gain by trading his dessert cup, that's GAIN and therefore technically taxable.
And since when do software engineers opt to take their salary in the form of food? Meals are a fringe benefit designed to keep employees happy. Will you tax free on site gym usage as well? How about fancy, office chairs? Or how about taxing free legal advice that some companies offer? How about taxing employee discounts on the products the company sells? Company holiday parties? Tax that bitch. You know what, you and IRS can go eat a bag of dicks. Stop taxing everything under the sun.
Sure, we can stop taxing everything. As soon as a bunch of people decide that we shouldn't be giving food and money to people who don't work or are disabled, provide fire and police protection, build highways, and a bunch of other shit that people keep asking the government to provide.
CEOs have to pay for their company cars if they use them for personal use. It's not unusually for people that own a business to have the business pay their bills, so why shouldn't that payment be taxed?? Obamacare has decided to tax overly generous health care plans.
If a benefit becomes a significant source of savings for employees, such that salary could be reduced because the benefit makes it worthwhile, why shouldn't it be taxed?? When the government raised income taxes, companies switched to options and benefits to compensate high-salary employees because it became cheaper.
Google providing food to it's employees is a method to retain workers without having to pay them more, and may encourage employees to hang around the office and work more. So Google gets the benefit of buying food, which they don't have to pay unemployment tax or medicare tax or medicaid taxes on and use that as 'payment' to work there instead of shelling out bigger paychecks.
There is a significant difference between providing a lunch every month of sandwiches, and providing free food every day. While I don't completely agree with taxing this as income on a personal level, it is consistent with existing taxes.
But, like the Occupy Anything hypocrites, feel scream out to tax everyone but me. Or feel free to scream out that taxes need to be cut without offering to reduce spending on social programs.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Those things aren't permanently given to employees.
Irrelevant. Those are services provided which have a monetary value. There's lots of places where you have to pay $5 or $10 a day to park your car. Elevators cost money to operate, if for no other reason than the electric power needed.
Never worked anywhere where soda was free, I even worked in places where coffee/tea were not gratis.
There's tons of tech companies where sodas and other drinks are available for free; this was particularly true during the dot-com boom, probably less so now.
There's tons of places where there's coffee pots available to use, as well as microwave ovens. These are free even if you bring in your own food items to use in them, but that costs the company money for the electricity.
But these costs (coffee/tea/water) are almost negligible compared to lunch.
Wrong: a coffee drink at Starbucks can cost $4. You might say that Starbucks is overpriced, but that's irrelevant: someone obviously thinks a coffee drink is worth $4, and that's a large fraction of a lunch. It could be argued (by the IRS) that those free coffees are also worth $4, and employees should be paying taxes on them.
But an additional difference: lunch is personal time.
No, it's not. There's no such thing as "personal time" when you're a salaried employee.