Tax law takes aim at popular perk: office snacks

The SkinnyPop in the break room may not last Donald Trump is targeting the office snack The president s signature tax law allows a long-standing business deduction for the cost of food provided to employees to expire imperiling a workplace perk popularized during Silicon Valley s dot-com boom that is now an emblem of modern office lifestyle A well-stocked pantry is now a staple at Wall Street banks among other places US companies that continue to provide office snacks coffee or on-site lunches will see them taxed after Dec when the deduction will be eliminated The tax change gained little attention as the sprawling nearly -page provision moved through Congress and it isn t yet clear how companies will respond A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs Group Inc which provides employees stipends for out of hours meals and a pantry stocked with complementary coffee and snacks declined to comment on what the company will do when the tax deduction ends So did a spokesperson for Meta Platforms Inc another company known for employees ready access to free food and coffee Spokespeople for for Alphabet Inc s Google didn t respond to requests for comment Far from Wall Street and Silicon Valley Alaska s fishing industry was spared from higher-cost noshes The state s fishermen earned a carve-out in a bid to keep Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski s aid for the overall bill which squeaked by only with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote No such luck for Maine s lobstermen whose senator Republican Susan Collins didn t vote for the ordinance Restaurants will also be able to deduct the cost of employee meals a long-standing tradition for kitchen and wait staff But that will no longer be the scenario for greater part other employers including factories and hospitals multiple of which also offer workers free or subsidized meals or snacks Eliminating the deduction is projected to raise billion in additional taxes on employers through according to Congress s Joint Committee on Taxation Free food has become broadly entrenched in workplaces with of US employers now providing free snacks double the rate a decade ago according to surveys conducted by the Society for Human Fund Management Free office pantries and cafes have been celebrated in new decades for encouraging employees to work longer hours boosting morale and sparking creative collaboration through chance encounters Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been widely quoted as instructing his office designers to assure no employee was more than feet away from food Trump s tax law halved the deduction for employer-provided food and scheduled it for elimination at the end of this year as the administration sought to lower that law s budget impact when a host of breaks expired Dec The new tax rule Trump signed on July rolled back majority of of the year-end scheduled tax increases but maintained elimination of office snack-deduction except for the Alaska and restaurant carveouts Still Ali Sabeti chief executive officer of ZeroCater Inc a San Francisco-based corporate catering company whose more than clients include major banks and tech companies such as Roku Inc disclosed he doesn t expect to lose business as a conclusion The catering company didn t lose clients in when the deduction was reduced to he reported It s pretty inelastic Sabeti noted When you take a tax deduction away the cost is going to go up but companies will continue to spend just like if you took away a deduction on a laptop Cam Kettles Bloomberg News Bloomberg L P Visit bloomberg com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC