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Alphabet Donated Its Employees' Holiday Gifts To Charity (fortune.com)
The employee perks at Google are legendary, and they've always included an over-the-top holiday gift for every employee. In the past, the company has surprised its 70,000 employees with Nexus phones, Android smartwatches, and Chromebooks. Fortune adds:This year employees speculated they might get Google's new Pixel phones or a Google Home unit, the company's competitor to Amazon's Echo. But they forgot: They don't work for Google anymore. They work for Alphabet. Instead of a shiny new gadget, Alphabet employees got an email. On Thursday Bloomberg published a bruising story about the new, cost-conscious regime of Alphabet, driven by its corporate re-organization and its ex-Wall Street CFO, Ruth Porat. Shortly after the story hit, employees were informed that their holiday gift this year was a donation to charity, Fortune has learned. Alphabet donated $30 million worth of Chromebooks, phones, and associated tech support to schools on its employees' behalf.
P.S. The CEO got a $12 million Christmas bonus and kept it all.
The exact same thing happened to me when I worked for one of the Big Six accounting firms. We HATED it, and as it turned out, it was a harbinger of things to come. Prior to that date, we had nice corporate social events held in nice places where we all dressed up. Afterwards, it was beer and pretzels, or no social event at all. It means that the bean counters are in control, and it's no longer going to be a fun place to work.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
$14,000 annual gift exclusion. I can gift someone $N, and let them choose the charity for the donation. They won't pay income tax on it, but they will receive the benefit of applying the donation to their next tax filing.
It isn't likely to mess up too many people's taxes. Most full time employees aren't getting near their $14k/year gift limit. (per person, so if jointly filing it's effectively $28k)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This is just an failed attempt at good PR.
This wasn't publicly announced.
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