6 ms·

The IRS taxes compensation. It's hard to believe it has taken them this long to realize that hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in free food and perks a month

• mmcconnell1618 13y ago
  If I work at a company that offers free food but I don't eat anything did I receive taxable compensation? If the company offers me a bonus and I never cash the check I never get taxed on that money. I'm not sure how the IRS could possibly assign a compensation value to individuals. One method might be to make the costs of these perks non-deductible from a company tax perspective.
• jgj 13y ago
  > The IRS taxes compensation. source? genuinely curious if those words are written somewhere. It would seem to me that the IRS should tax income, specifically income that I can use to pay taxes (or which can reasonably and reliably be converted into something that I can use to pay taxes). I'd love to send 40% of last week's corporate-paid lunch to the IRS but my guess is they wouldn't accept it.
  • hyperbovine 13y ago
    Perhaps you could you all the income you save from not having to buy lunch to pay said taxes.
    • furyofantares 13y ago
      How do you know how much I would have spent on lunch? Or if I would have spent anything at all?
  • bradleyjg 13y ago
    source? genuinely curious if those words are written somewhere. IRS Publication 525 -- "In most cases, you must include in gross income everything you receive in payment for personal services. In addition to wages, salaries, commissions, fees, and tips, this includes other forms of compensation such as fringe benefits and stock options." It would seem to me that the IRS should tax income, specifically income that I can use to pay taxes (or which can reasonably and reliably be converted into something that I can use to pay taxes). I'd love to send 40% of last week's corporate-paid lunch to the IRS but my guess is they wouldn't accept it. You can't send the IRS 40% of a fully paid vacation to Hawaii, including use of the corporate jet either. Should companies be able to give their employees such vacations without out the employee being required to pay taxes on the value? Think about what incentives that would create -- individuals could evade taxes altogether by simply negotiating with their employer to provide whatever goods and services they wished to consume rather than money. And because such benefits wouldn't make up part of the AGI the individual would also be eligible for government social programs.
• ardit33 13y ago
  They are not, if they are meant to make you work harder. Eg. if you have free food/coffee at work, and you eat in, then you have more time to do work/more productive. If your team decides to have an "offsite" at a restaurant/event, should that be taxed as well? It just goes through a slippery slope that you view anything that a company provides as taxable. I think it would be a very short sighted decission to squeeze few dollars on the short term, for long term loss on overall productivity.
• raverbashing 13y ago
  There's an acronym for that: BIK Benefit in Kind And is taxed in some countries (to some extent) like Ireland and Germany
• kyllo 13y ago
  It hasn't. Fringe benefits are already taxable. What they are talking about is conducting audits to enforce the existing tax code, based on information that employers and/or workers may not be paying the taxes they owe on these fringe benefits.