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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.
VMware sent out an email to employees and said "There is $$$ in your http://brightfunds.org/ account. Give it to whatever charity you care about". And the employees do get the tax write-off.
- Vincit qui patitur.
I thought this was interesting: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
to add insult to injury, this is probably a thinly disguised move to unload slow moving inventory and deduct it at full price + "tech support"
OMG LOL FTG
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That doesn't make a difference, and in fact, counterintuitively, the benefit works the opposite way of what you are thinking.
If you already surpass the standard deductions, then if you received the gift and passed it to charity, you'd pay taxes on $X of income (at your marginal rate), and then get a deduction of $X of income (at your marginal rate). Nothing has changed
On the other hand, if you previously were going to take the standard deduction, then getting the gift and writing it off actually COSTS you money. You have to realize the people taking the standard deduction are essentially already getting a tax deduction of more money than they deserve. Any additional deduction amount that it takes to get them up to the full amount of the standard deduction is essentially wasted. So lets say your itemized deductions are $1000 short of the standard deduction. You get to take the standard deduction and get full credit as if you had the full amount as your itemized deductions. So now lets add a $3000 gift to your income, which you subsequently pass along to charity. You receive the $3000 gift and are taxed on the full $3000. But when you go to add it to your itemized deductions, the first $1000 of the deduction is just to bring you up to what you were already getting anyway via the standard deduction. So the only additional deduction you get is on the extra $2000 that exceeded the standard deduction. Thus you are taxed on $3k but essentially only get a deduction for $2k. Thus you are worse off than if the gift were passed directly to charity.
And finally, worst off would be the people who receive the gift, pass it along to charity, and STILL don't surpass the standard deduction. They get taxed on the whole thing, but don't get to take advantage of ANY of the tax deduction.
Its even worse. Out here in Cupertino the Schools have a program where every kid has to have an iPad as homework will be assigned through an iPad. No choice or option for using another platform. The first year Apple donated the iPads .Once the teachers got used to using it now its the parents can buy their own, buy one from the school at a discounted price or if you are really really cant afford an ipad the School will lend out last years iPads. Guess how many parents told their kids no you cant have the shiny new one like all your classmates and should use the older school issued one.
Apple donated for one year and now has a yearly revenue stream. You dont even have to wait till they grow up
**Life is too short to be serious**
I did some consulting at a company who's CEO felt it important to be on that "Best Places to Work" list. So the place was filled with silly perks. But I couldn't help noticing the employee parking lot was full of shitty cars.
Free drinks and parties are nice, but ultimately I want money.
Depends on the company and the value of the gift. When I was at Apple, I think they just treated it as taxable income as long as it wasn't a high-value item, but when they gave us the original iPhone and the glass Apple blocks, IIRC, they paid the tax. YMMV.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Do you think upper management ever sent themselves a letter that said in effect "Instead of your regular big bonuses, the company has instead donated X $Millions to a charity in your name. Have a Merry Christmas."? I think not. If they would never do this to themselves, why do it to all the other employees?
Who will deduct that donation from taxes, Google or employees on whose behalf that donation was made?