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Policy

IRS Wants Tech Firms' Lunch Money

Scott Shackford | 4.8.2013 6:30 PM

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Large image on homepages | tantek / Foter.com / CC BY-NC
(tantek / Foter.com / CC BY-NC)

If you don't work at a Silicon Valley tech firm and are envious of the stories about their fancy, fully-decked-out work environments. Apparently the IRS is envious too, or at least envious of the money behind it and whether they should get a cut.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Internal Revenue Service is looking into the "free lunches" that companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley heavyweights provide to their employees, and whether those meals should be subject to taxation.

"It appears for a lot of these companies that they're not actually including (them) in their employees paychecks or W-2s and therefore the question is whether there's some skirting of the tax laws," Mark said this morning on the Markets Hub. Needless to say, this development won't be welcome in the Valley, where the sumptuous workplace cafeterias are an ingrained part of the culture.

The question is whether these meals are part of a "compensation" package, like a company car.

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NEXT: German Thieves Steal Five Tons of Nutella

Scott Shackford is a policy research editor at Reason Foundation.

PolicyIRSNanny StateScience & TechnologyEconomicsTaxesInternetBusiness and Industry
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