Capitalism is starting to feel like a massive piss-take. You've got corps laughing all the way to the bank with billions in profits feeding their employees with fucking potatoes.

Surely something has to give?

Here is a little something from the IRS pub 525 about bonuses.

Bonuses and awards. Bonuses or awards you receive for outstanding work are included in your income and should be shown on your Form W-2. These include prizes such as vacation trips for meeting sales goals. If the prize or award you receive is goods or services, you must include the FMV of the goods or services in your income. However, if your employer merely promises to pay you a bonus or award at some future time, it isn’t taxable until you receive it or it’s made available to you.

So do they really believe the fair market value of a potato is $12? The IRS doesn't go by retail price.

The FMV for a pound of russet potatoes is $2.50 soo yeah no they are doing too much and should be reported.

Meals and lodging

You don't include in your income the value of meals and lodging provided to you and your family by your employer at no charge if the following conditions are met.

The meals are: Furnished on the business premises of your employer, and Furnished for the convenience of your employer.

At one point does it become acceptable to return "gifts" like these at high velocities?

I remember the week after I saved a client forty five large in taxes, my boss gave me a ten dollar gift card to Walmart. I don't have many kind things to say about that boss.

The most surprising thing about this is this wasnt in the US. It seems like such an american capitalist douchebag thing to do.

I think American will now start tipping hospital staffs.

Perhaps a sign that the hospital admin needs a potato canon to the face, in their next group Minecraft session.

this "story" is spam, actually.

the dearth of people in this thread who can identify it as such is sad evidence of a lack of media literacy.

edit: i can't reply to @kescusay@lemmy.world because i deleted this post from lemmy.ml, but, i see they replied:

It’s the Independent, not spam. Indy100 is part of the Independent.

so, ok, I looked, and yeah, I see this "indy100" site is indeed part of a business called "The Independent" which carries the name of a former newspaper.

But this story, like most of the content on indy100, appears to have no basis in reality. It is not "news", it is dishonest garbage pretending to be factual for the purpose of selling the audience's attention to advertisers. aka spam.

Very much a theme this year. My company normally gives equity (that cashes out over 3 years ofc) every end of year for the past 4-5 years. This year however, no equity allotments announced, instead we get a floor pizza party with ice cream. People are less than enthused.

And I thought my $160 Christmas bonus was disappointing.....

The best part is that you don't dare question what you do get, or you receive the "well, at least it's something". Yeah, I guess so, but if the intent is to make the employee feel valued it's not working very well. I do have to say that a baked potato is still better than some things I've seen posted before.

WHAT

Did that article have blank templates to fill in tweets? It seemed like there was a quota of tweets the author had to fill in the spaces for and missed one.

Who the fuck runs that hospital? Ebineezer Scrooge pre-ghost-visitation?

My previous employer's Christmas 'bonuses' included a single plastic kids bike pedal, a spray-painted (nice shade of orange) spanner, and fake money. I'd take the potato any day.

There is a Russia joke in there somewhere.

A fifteen dollar potato has to be a fairly nice potato though.