101–110 of 533 posts
Much easier for city councils to virtue signal on non issues rather than tackling the sea of needles and shit on their sidewalks.
This is very interesting for me for a very different reason: We're in Germany where this is taxed heavily. If you offer your employees free meals, this becomes part of their taxable income, so you actually have to give them a raise to even this out, and then you have employees that want to opt-out to get the hands on that cash... I always wondered how Google Germany deals with this. There is a minimum below which it…
My bet is that it makes no difference. FB workers are rich, and they'll not want to eat every day in the caf, and they'll be out and about as much as they would otherwise. The alternative won't be 'restos' it will be 'the microwave'.
It's going to make a huge difference in terms of FB's appeal to potential employees. Who wants to work at FB if it means that you'll have to waste time and energy figuring out what to do for lunch every day?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see what's anticompetitive about it - surely they buy the food they give out from local retailers?
A food wholesaler and a restaurant are two entirely different businesses.
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I don't think it works like that. Do employees today get taxed on the value of the free food ? Why would that be different if it costs 1$ , and how do you define the value of the free food anyways ?
It's technically compensation, so why wouldn't it be taxable?
This is very interesting for me for a very different reason: We're in Germany where this is taxed heavily. If you offer your employees free meals, this becomes part of their taxable income, so you actually have to give them a raise to even this out, and then you have employees that want to opt-out to get the hands on that cash... I always wondered how Google Germany deals with this. There is a minimum below which it…
There have been occasional attempts to enforce the law - IRS recently made noises in 2014/15.
The challenge is that it's taxable to the employees but hard to track and prove, it's for relatively little money per employee, and the firms argue that it's for their benefit to secure information/improve productivity/build cohesion...
Google can and will fight far harder than the IRS is willing to on this issue and the IRS isn't entirely sure that they'd win. The IRS can spend resources in places to make a much higher return with an almost certain chance of success.
So no effective taxes on meals.
To make it happen in your company, follow the Google and Uber strategy. Just do it and deal with the law later.
Your ability to pay any fines later may be different from Google's and the chance that one of your employees will call the tax office on you may be dramatically higher because Germany.
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An oft repeated fallacy... Originalism applies when it extends the rights of the people or restricts the government, not the other way around.
The right to self-rule outside the enumerated powers of the federal government (and thus, the general police power of the states) is a right of the people against the federal government.
I was not surprised when I read the headline, but I was surprised when I saw the reason when I read the article. I had expected it would be over taxes. From the photos and description in the article and elsewhere, it looks like you can get full meals for free, meals that would cost at least $10 if bought at retail. An employee who took two meals a day at the free company cafeteria every working day would be getting a…
So the real value is probably more like $2, and even at two full meals per day that would translate to 200 working days times $4 is about $800.
I can kind of see where Mountain View is coming from, basically the "San Antonio Center" (if you didn't read the article, MV is only applying the restriction in that particular place, not in the whole MV) is one of two places in MV with some life and bustle (it's kinda the day destination, having a bunch of grocery shops as well as a walmart, kohls and target and the other is kind of the night destination, being more…
This feels politically coherent: it strikes a populist chord, but just furthers the rent-seeking interests in the area. It's of the same ilk as NIMBYism, but this time, it's a different form of rent.
No one has mentioned the jobs to be destroyed in catering, nor the fact that catering jobs pay far better than restaurants for all the people making the food!