[Paladin2]

IRS needs to tax rat employees at 200%.

[amnestynone]

That is fine with me. Amnesty loving left wing bustards want to spend so much money they should pay more taxes.

[skeeter]

Silicon Valley’s iconic beer bash will never be the same.

[Pontiac]

Google estimated at $8 to $10 for an employee that eats two meals a day at the office could cost the company an extra $4,000 to $5,000 a year in taxes.

This probably means that the free meals are going the way of the two martini lunch.

$5K per year per employee is a big price to pay for fringe benefit.

It may not go away immediately but a couple bad quarters for Google and it will.

[Qwackertoo]

Here in the Silicon Valley of the South East . . . they provide lunch for employees and who knows what else . . . but a smaller company and I think he’ll keep on doing it regardless until some fired employee down the road tries to get him in trouble.

[jiggyboy]

I wonder if those double-decker luxury bus rides back and forth are next on the list. You hardly need a car any more if you don’t have to drive to work and you make enough money that you can buy your bottled water from the internet (not a hypothetical conjecture).

[NEWwoman]

And if they can track and tax all those free meal, it must be a piece of cake to find all those “lost” emails of their own. :)

[NormsRevenge]

What does the IRS pay to eat your lunch?

Zippo.

[gaijin]

I wonder if Canada could do this to Burger King..?

I wonder if Switzerland would do this to Walgreens..?

I wonder if Singapore would do this to that Facebook guy..?

[RicocheT]

The IRS and the socialist liberals embedded in its bureaucracy are bent on destroying private business in our USA through rulings & regulations.

If a business provides morning coffee, a free or much reduced lunch, it is not wages. Companies do this for competitive business reasons—for the convenience of the employer. Coffee wakes up an employee & that employee does more work for the employer. The cheap lunch is because the employer can post a shorter lunch break time, the employees won’t be away as long if they left the premises. A lot of insurance co.s do this to get their claims people back to the cubicles sooner. The employer benefits and the perk shouldn’t be considered a wage

Making it a wage requires the employer to add up what the employee ate or didn’t eat. That is an added paperwork cost for the employer. If the employer drops the lunch due to the IRS rule, morale drops and cranky employees work less or quit, another business cost.

[txhurl]

which may mean less opportunity for employees to spill company secrets off campus as well.

---

WTF? So who wants this, Silicon Valley or the IRS?

You can spill secrets all day no matter where you are, elevator, lunchroom, conference room, restroom if you have a phone.

[gusopol3]

a free meal at Google estimated at $8 to $10 for an employee that eats two meals a day at the office could cost the company an extra $4,000 to $5,000 a year in taxes

so $20 /day x 5 days/ week x 50 wks/year = $10,000/ yr benefit, is going to net IRS $4-5000/ year according to this genius reporter. Under what rule could they tax the company anyway? How about free parking at work when parking is $30 / day at a city garage. I'm sure I wouldn't care for most Google employees , but next to the IRS thugs, I'll take their side anytime.

[ChildOfThe60s]

“Taxman”

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Taxman!
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

Don’t ask me what I want it for (Aahh Mr. Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more (Aahh Mr. Heath)
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

And you’re working for no one but me
Taxman!

[Iron Munro]

They were instrumental in electing Obommie The Commie and wanted “Hope and Change” so this is their opportunity to pay “Their Fair Share”.

[Kickass Conservative]

When these Companies slash the Free Food Benefits, what will happen to all the Cafeteria Employees?

Must be why they’re pushing the $15 an Hour Fast Food Worker Salary.

From Google and Yahoo to McDonalds and Jack In The Box thanks to the IRS.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Technically the IRS should be taxing the free breakfasts, lunches and dinners given by school systems to students without regard to income tests. Should issue W-2s to the parents. If they are on food stamps, reduce the amount of food stamps by the amount of free meals furnished. If they are not on food stamps the parents must declare the amount as income.

[snappahead]

Internal Revenue Service....
TARGETING.

[mabarker1]

The frigging irs needs to just tax themselves out of existance- USELESS BASSTURDZ

[Gideon7]

the IRS states that the free meals will now be considered a taxable fringe benefit, the same way a company car or phone is.

An employer-provided cellphone is considered 'listed property' by the IRS. That means you must estimate the percentage of it that will be for business use (and document it). Then you can deduct that percentage. It has to be at least 50% or none of it is deductible.

Here's an example: Say you buy your employee a $500 iPhone. You declare it as listed property with 70% business use. Then the business can deduct 500*.7 = $350 off its taxes as a business expense (actually it's a depreciation allowance modulo Sec 179). During an IRS audit if the records show you over-reported the percentage, they can tax you on the difference and make you pay penalties.

So the article claiming that the IRS wants to consider cellphones 'a taxable fringe benefit' just doesn't make sense from what I understand. I am a small business owner who has been audited over precisely this kind of thing.

It's simply not how the tax law works for company-supplied laptops, tables, cellphones, and similar devices.

I think the article is dodgy.

[Amendment10]

With all due respect to mom & pop, please consider the following. As mentioned in related threads, as a consequence of the parents of Silicon Valley big-wigs, in this example, not making sure that their children were taught about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood, the companies will probably find themselves in the following unhappy situation. They will be clueless with respect to being able to argue the following Supreme Court clarifications of Congress's limited power to lay taxes against the IRS's misguided, constitutionally indefensible plan to tax free meals.

• ”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

• “Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

The reason that Congress has been wrongly overstepping its limited power to lay taxes is the following imo. Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR's activist judges basically swept the 10th Amendment under the carpet when they decided Wickard v. Filburn so that they could argue “finding new powers” for Congress in the Constitution's Commerce Clause, Clause 3 of Section 8 of Article I.

More specifically, wrongly ignoring the first Supreme Court excerpt above, and using terms like “some concept” and “implicit,” here is what was left of the 10th Amendment in Wickard v. Filburn after FDR's justices got finished with it.

“In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was “necessary and proper” to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept of sovereignty thought to be implicit [emphases added] in the status of statehood. Certain activities such as “production,” “manufacturing,” and “mining” were occasionally said to be within the province of state governments and beyond the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause.”—Wickard v. Filburn, 1942.

FDR’s thug justices had essentially reduced the 10th Amendment to a wives’ tale.

Again, the feds have no constitutional authority to tax intrastate corporate free lunches imo.