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There is very clear precedent on this from the way IRS treats perks as either deductible or wage compensation. Basically if your perks are not universal to all

by sedachv 10y ago

There is very clear precedent on this from the way IRS treats perks as either deductible or wage compensation. Basically if your perks are not universal to all of your employees they cease to be deductible perks and start being treated as wage payments to those certain employees and therefore subject to Social Security and income tax withholding. With cafeteria food you can either provide free food to all of your employees, or run a cafeteria that charges for food at-cost (the cafeteria cannot operate at a loss). Having an executive cafeteria used to be a thing in companies. This is discrimination based on employee rank. The IRS treats executive cafeterias as wage compensation. Discriminating between employees of the same rank based on things like race would be racism, sex would be sexism, etc. The jackets were not provided to certain employees, therefore they are not a perk and their value is wage compensation according to the IRS. So this is exactly like denying all the women SREs a bonus because they are women. BTW it is very likely that those jackets were deducted as perks so this decision is not just overt discrimination by Uber but also breaking tax law.

nickff 10y ago
Interestingly, if the women's jackets were more expensive than the men's, would that not be equivalent to having different 'cafeterias' depending on status (specifically gender)? I suppose that one solution would be to ask the garment supplier to put all the jackets on one invoice line, at the average cost, but that seems obfuscatory and possibly fraudulent.
- foldr 10y ago
  In this case they were more expensive but not more valuable, since it was just the difference between bulk and individual prices. If the company buys every employee the same chocolate bar, it doesn't matter if Brad's cost $0.10 because it was part of a bulk order whereas Jane's cost $1.50 because it was bought at the retail price.
SilasX 10y ago
>Having an executive cafeteria used to be a thing in companies. Well, yeah. When you have 90% marginal tax rates and the IRS hasn't caught up with taxing non-cash compensation/perks, then you tend to look for every possible perk you can give such employees! Anything short of "okay, what would you spend your next $X of take-home pay on? Tada! That's a perk for you now!"

by sedachv 10y ago

nickff 10y ago

Interestingly, if the women's jackets were more expensive than the men's, would that not be equivalent to having different 'cafeterias' depending on status (specifically gender)? I suppose that one solution would be to ask the garment supplier to put all the jackets on one invoice line, at the average cost, but that seems obfuscatory and possibly fraudulent.

foldr 10y ago
In this case they were more expensive but not more valuable, since it was just the difference between bulk and individual prices. If the company buys every employee the same chocolate bar, it doesn't matter if Brad's cost $0.10 because it was part of a bulk order whereas Jane's cost $1.50 because it was bought at the retail price.

SilasX 10y ago

>Having an executive cafeteria used to be a thing in companies. Well, yeah. When you have 90% marginal tax rates and the IRS hasn't caught up with taxing non-cash compensation/perks, then you tend to look for every possible perk you can give such employees! Anything short of "okay, what would you spend your next $X of take-home pay on? Tada! That's a perk for you now!"