A fundamental business dynamic is that transparently passing on expenses is a low margin behavior, while comping more things for "free" and charging for produce

A fundamental business dynamic is that transparently passing on expenses is a low margin behavior, while comping more things for "free" and charging for produced value leads to higher margins. Personally I'd rather workers have higher margins (ie higher pay) while personally choosing how to spend some of that income to fulfill the job requirements, than receiving lower pay while being able to nickle and dime employers for bureaucratically-approved expenses. Of course it's not like the government really wants to encourage more small businesses that replace W-2 workers at large businesses, given how lopsided the tax code is against W-2 income.