
Google tells employees they can’t expense food when working from home - whatok
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/google-tells-employees-not-to-expense-food-perks-in-work-from-home.html
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three_seagrass
This makes sense because the IRS has been coming after Facebook and Google for
years to tax their free food as a form of income.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-and-free-food-at-tech-
co...](https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-and-free-food-at-tech-
companies-2014-9)

Expensing WFH lunches would give IRS more ammo to tie the food to taxable
individual employee benefits.

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jjeaff
The recent tax law changes completely disallow the expensing of on site meals
provided to employees. It has already started phasing out and might be fully
phased out by 2021 if I remember correctly. So the IRS doesn't have to fight
that anymore.

So they can still provide it to employees, but if they want the tax deduction,
they will have to itemize it on employee compensation, which will cause them
to pay taxes on it as income.

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kungato
Yeah, so? No one expensed food when doing a work from home day before covid19.
What's next? Expensing your house for staying there?

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lovich
I'm fairly certain you can at least get a tax write off of your home office if
its dedicated to work

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jrm2k6
Isn't it only if no other location to work from is available to you as an
employee?

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CHB0403085482
Well, you can't expense your car depreciation/usage when you commute to work.
Right?

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lazyload
Seems about par for the course. I'm sure a lot of policy would have to be
enacted to allow something like that, and my company (also a large tech
company) announced something similar not too long ago.

