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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.
If I can't write a donation off on my taxes, then I didn't donate it. Fuck you Google.
Their bonuses were gifted to "charity" aka, the shareholders...
Alphabet is not so poor that their charitable deeds must go through taking a chunk off their employees' salary. If it mattered that much to the execs, why don't they cut their own salaries for the year to cover it up? They wouldn't even have to slash it by that much to cover the 30M.
The intent of this twisting of words is clear: to make it socially unacceptable to complain about it. It's utter bullshit.
I'm glad Alphabet decided to help out by donating .... but if I worked for them, I'd still be a little upset by this.
#1? These donations of millions of dollars worth of technology to help schools/education don't exactly have a great track record. When your teachers and staff are underpaid and over-stressed, they're just not going to take the time and effort required to implement the new tech very well. A lot of this stuff will wind up sitting in schools, unused -- or under-utilized. $30 million given to help hire more quality teachers and keep up with maintenance issues in the school buildings would probably have done a lot more.
#2? It's not necessarily being "spoiled and greedy" to assume that your employer will give you a "bonus" or gift at the end of the year, if they're traditionally known for doing it. That's part of how your overall compensation is factored. (EG. When I was hired on where I work now, I tried to negotiate for a higher salary than they offered but they wouldn't budge. Instead, they countered that they almost always gave out end of year bonuses, plus typically did at least one big company meeting/trip to a nice location for several days, where we'd enjoy a lot of perks and entertainment too. Those were bargaining chips to make me take the offer ... not truly gifts that I would be "greedy" to expect to receive, if I did good work through the whole year.)
They start out often quite employee centric....sure you work hard, but they give you lots of perks at work, free food drinks, kitchens, parties on and off campus...even keggers....
And then..they get a bit too big, the owners cede management to more managerial types, who count pennies but don't know the worth of a HAPPY EMPLOYEE....and then well, the fun and perks start to disappear, and soon....it is like any other boring job, and those little extras that build team work, or make you feel 'ok' about working a few extra hours to get something out the door, *vanish*.
At that point, unless the pay is insanely good...no real reason to stay or show any type of loyalty whatsoever.
The soul of the company is gone.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
https://www.irs.gov/businesses...
If Alphabet is actually donating shit in the employee's names, then the employee can deduct it.
Alphabet pays the tax on the gift to the employee (see the link). The employee donates the gift and deducts it.
The fact that the employee never received the gift directly doesn't matter. All that matters is whether or not Alphabet is donating on its employee's behalf, as stated in the summary, or if it's donating in its own name.
The giver (Alphabet) pays the gift tax, not the recipient (the employee). The donor (the employee) gets to deduct it.
You just don't do something like this.
EVERYONE knows this is a tax write-off even if you honestly didn't intend it to be that way it is how it will universally be interpreted.
If you didn't want to give Christmas bonus simply not giving them to people may be a disappointment but pulling this shit is far worse. It is essentially telling your employees to go fuck themselves while announcing they will not be receiving a bonus.
Given current labor environment whoever made this decision to announce donations like this should probably be asked to resign.
The person doing the "giving" (Alphabet) gets the tax write-off, so the employees got absolutely nothing. Alphabet is in no way required to give their employees gifts, and I think it would have been better if they didn't. This is just an failed attempt at good PR. I'm happy Alphabet is donating to charity - they just shouldn't be pretending they're doing it for their employees.
They wanted the tax deduction and the good press. Dicks.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
To be fair, I would have expected the bean counters to be in control of an accounting firm to start with.
something socially responsible
Screw the workers by not giving them something that they usually get. Check
Make a massive donation to gain a huge tax write off when you already pay next to no taxes. Check.
CEO takes a bonus likely equal to the after tax donation that was made for saving money and screwing employees at the same time. Check.
Get either shills or complete idiot's support on Slashdot for actions. Social responsibility at its best.
So it doesn't matter whether the company or the employee gets the deduction - it works out the same either way
It isn't the same. It can matter alot.
First, the company is picking the charity, not you. For example, someone impacted by breast cancer may want to donate to a charity related to that instead of handing more money to schools. I know at least two dozen charities that are more appropriate than throwing more money to my local school district which has already gotten a tax levy to spend $1.2 MILLION on giving students iPads. (I would be VERY unhappy if my employer said they valued my work so much they were going to give more of my money to a "charity" that was already taxing me to do the same thing.)
Second, if you get the money it may put you in a status where it makes sense to itemize, and you may then deduct a lot of things that would otherwise not be deductible. It may increase your giving because you know that you can deduct it.
Third, it will appear on your annual income statements, which are used by the SSA to determine retirement payments, or if a year counts towards retirement at all. It can also have an effect on how much you can borrow as it will be shown as income.
But overall, giving the money to the employee means that the employee chooses where his money goes, not the company. It may help the tax liability of the employee by allowing itemization to increase deductions after donating the money. Or it may simply be a really useful $3000 if it isn't donated.
In either case, it isn't the same thing even if in some cases the ends are the same. The ends don't justify the means.