IRS considers taxing work perks like food, gym memberships • Hacker News Board

Re: IRS considers taxing work perks like food, gym memberships

#31

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #10

The WSJ story mentioned in the Fox News article is a year old: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732405030... It's just FUD clickbait, like a great many 'news' articles published at tax time. Consider the source.

Thanks for the heads-up. I flagged the post too.

Re: IRS considers taxing work perks like food, gym memberships

#32

Post by furyofantares » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #28

jgj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Perhaps you could you all the income you save from not having to buy lunch to pay said taxes.

How do you know how much I would have spent on lunch? Or if I would have spent anything at all?

Re: IRS considers taxing work perks like food, gym memberships

#33

Post by kyllo » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 5:16 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #5

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 is compensation.

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.

Re: IRS considers taxing work perks like food, gym memberships

#34

Post by 0003 » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 5:21 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #3

Last paragraph made me laugh: "Even if the IRS does crack down on this perk, the high-tech lunch isn't likely to completely disappear. Legal experts suspect most companies will probably just report it as 'taxable income' to employees and then pay them more in salary to cover the cost." Written by someone who has probably has little experience in the real world.

Mangaement:Quick accounting! This is a huge deal for IRS this year I read about it in the WSJ. Get this, they are going to start taxing employees for the gourmet meals. Don't give me that look - Of course ... we ... will ... reimburse our employees for this.

Accountant: So... for every employee we need to do an infinite sum series for a given taxable income based on the fair value of how much they have eaten...

Management: Ewwph. Huh?

Accountant: We don't even track this yet...

Management: We'll take what we pay on food and divide by the employees

Accountant: This would create a tragedy of the commons scenario that will destroy morale...

Management: Ewwph... how... we weigh each employee before and after they enter and exit the building AND restroom and find their weight differential. Then we apply that to a $/weight_delta factor to get their taxable income!!

Accountant: No ... Fuck no.

Management: Then how about we make employees pay for their meals and then reimburse afterwards like we do with our expense reports! So simple - literally just thought of that.

Accountant: Most sensical thing you said today, but accounting would collapse under the weight of all of those expense reports.

Management: Spoil sport. No more free lunches.