对公司免费员工餐收税？硅谷表示这是个“馊主意”

    多年来，许多硅谷科技公司的员工一直享用免费员工餐。这是谷歌（Google）、Facebook和无数初创公司为员工提供的福利之一。然而如果美国国税局（Internal Revenue Service）落实了收税意向，这些免费食品就将成为过去了。

    《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal ）本周二报道称，美国国税局正准备就免费员工餐向员工征税。在计算员工的预扣税款时，公司必须加入免费食物的价值。

    这一消息让硅谷许多公司感到担忧，因为“管饱吃”的员工自助餐是他们招聘时开出的基本条件之一。提供员工餐也是一种巧妙的手段，让员工除了睡觉以外没有理由离开办公室，从而工作更长时间。

    社交网站Tagged公司营销副总裁史蒂夫•萨尔纳承认：“提供食物是人们对大多数科技公司的正常预期，因此征税问题引发了一些关注。”在这家公司，员工每周至少会享用一次由旧金山金融区附近的餐厅烹制的免费餐。

    Weebly是一家让用户利用定制软件工具创建网站的服务提供商，该公司的前端工程师南森•格雷迪认为，对免费员工餐征税的想法“令人尴尬”。他表示，提供员工餐可以促进社交，公司员工在用餐时可以轻松地交谈。Weebly每天都提供免费午餐，从而创造这种交流的机会。

    格雷迪表示：“最开始是向免费员工餐征税，然后呢，是不是还要向免费咖啡征税？这根本没有道理。”

    引领硅谷免费自助餐潮流的谷歌公司并未立刻发表对此事的看法。在提供免费食物方面追随谷歌脚步的Facebook也拒绝发表评论。

    Inkling数字出版公司首席执行官马特•麦金尼斯对征收食物税的想法非常不满。他的公司通过餐饮公司Ryan Scott 2 Go，已经向员工提供了近4年的免费午餐。去年，公司还聘请另一家餐饮公司ZeroCater提供晚餐。麦金尼斯认为，科技业提供免费员工餐就像是雇主给员工提供401K企业养老保险一样，属于常规福利。

    像谷歌、Facebook和苹果（Apple）这样的公司可以轻松地给员工加薪，抵消免费员工餐导致的额外税费。但初创公司通常都不得不提供免费洗衣、瑜伽课程和免费食物，以此争取顶级人才，这个政策会让它们处于极为不利的情况。麦金尼斯表示，在Inkling公司，他需要将员工的年薪提高5,000美元以上，才能抵消额外食物税对员工收入的影响。

    麦金尼斯说：“看起来这将导致出人意料的可怕后果。”（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    For years, many tech workers in Silicon Valley have enjoyed free meals — one of several cushy perks offered the likes of Google, Facebook, and countless startups. But complimentary grub could become a thing of the past if the Internal Revenue Service has its way.

    A report on Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal revealed the IRS is pushing to tax employees for their free meals. Companies would have to add in the value of free food when calculating employee tax withholding.

    News of a potential tax on free meals has many worried in Silicon Valley, where all-you-can eat buffets are a basic recruiting tool. They’re also a subtle way to get employees to work longer hours by giving them no reason for them to leave the office except to sleep.

    “Having food available or catered in is kind of expected of most tech firms, so this is a bit of a concern,” admits Steve Sarner, VP of Marketing, at the social networking site Tagged, where employees get at least one free meal a week cooked up by nearby restaurants in San Francisco’s Financial District.

    Nathan Grady, a front-end engineer at Weebly, a service that lets users build web sites with custom software tools, called the idea of taxing free food awkward. The practice is a social catalyst that makes it easy for a company’s staff to talk to one another, he said. Weebly makes that easy enough by serving free catered lunch daily.

    “You start doing that, well then, do you start taxing free coffee as well?” Grady said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

    Google, which popularized the free Silicon Valley buffet, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Facebook, which followed in Google’s footsteps by offering its employees free food, declined to comment.

    The idea of a food tax rankles Matt MacInnis, CEO of the digital publishing startup Inkling. His company has served its employees free lunches for nearly four years via the catering business Ryan Scott 2 Go. ZeroCater, another caterer, was hired last year to serve dinner. MacInnis argued that free meals in the tech industry are a lot like standard benefits such as employers matching 401k contributions by their workers.

    Companies like Google GOOG 1.00% , Facebook FB 2.49% , and Apple AAPL 0.78% can easily afford to pay employees more to cover any additional taxes for free meals, he said. Therefore, their recruiting wouldn’t suffer. But start-ups, which feel compelled to offer free laundry, yoga classes, and free food to compete for top talent, would be put at a big disadvantage, he said. In Inkling’s case, MacInnis says he would need to increase employee’s annual salaries by more than $5,000 to cover any extra food taxes.

    “It seems there would be pretty terrible, unintended consequences,” MacInnis said.