The conference and some sorts of legal expenses are pretty legitimate expenditures if you operate with the opinion that going to a conference makes you a more p

The conference and some sorts of legal expenses are pretty legitimate expenditures if you operate with the opinion that going to a conference makes you a more productive employee. Training employees definitely shouldn't be double taxed (we might even want to subsidize it as a society) but it's a hard area of activities to define. Legal expenses brought on solely due to your employment (i.e. the rando manager at dominion that a bunch of people sued last year) also shouldn't be considered individual benefits. Employers should never have the ability to shift liabilities onto employees without really good cause (i.e. gross negligence). That's why, if there's an accident at an autoshop with a lift and you're injured you're generally better off suing the shop rather than the employee.