I'm definitely not the person who would normally leap to the defense of the bigtech employer firing somebody, but I have absolutely no sympathy for people who fiddle expenses.
The company doesn't provide a laundry detergent/wineglass/acne pad benefit. They provide a food benefit. If they give you uber eats or doordash vouchers and you choose to spend it on something that is not food, you are committing expenses fraud.
You may think to yourself "all dollars are green, what's the harm?" but it's not even close to ambiguous for me. They provide that voucher for food. If you spend it on something else, that's exactly the same as if you just stole the money.
If they were really that concerned and it really was that critical, they should have limited it in some way or have been auditing it and issuing warnings before it got to the point of termination. When an employer offers a perk like this, it’s their responsibility to ensure it’s used properly and to monitor its usage, not the employee.
More likely what happened is this was a reason to fire someone they didn’t want anyways. The fact the enforcement is uneven also exposes them to additional liability. It’s likely any one of these employees could sue for wrongful termination, if they were not given a written notice of the proper usage of the perk.
When I go travel with work I get some money per day to cover meals. I can use that to only buy acne pads if I want as long as someone else is not paying for my food.
Isn't this the difference between a voucher benefit and an expense claim though?
Let's say you make employee of the month and receive an amazon voucher to be spent "treating yourself" but instead use it to buy a gift for your spouse.
Is this fraud? You made no false claim about how you would use the money. You did receive it with a specified use though.
What if your employer gives you a £500 a year raise and states it is to cover the additional costs of work from home. But you already have a nice chair so you but groceries. Is that fraud?
Your “what if” scenarios are changing the situation in material ways. This case sounds pretty straightforward: they were told the rules, chose not to follow them, and are unlikely to get anywhere legally unless they can demonstrate that management knew and approved of their actions.
I assume so, but the difference here is the people who want to buy services from Zuckerberg want to buy them a lot more than they don’t want to buy them, and in this case, Meta does not want to buy services from this employee a lot more than they do want to buy services from this employee.
While I don't disagree, it still seems rather crass to immediately fire people for it. Surely you'd first tell people to knock it off before firing them?
Of course that sort of assumes that the firing wasn't the end goal.
My understanding is that some people were fired, others were warned. This was most likely done by number of times they exploited the system. Say tens of infractions compared to a few.
There likely was some threshold which some went over and everyone fired should have known based on written policy.
Ah yes, it was in the EULA. Which everyone always reads.
If you've got an otherwise good employee it's incredibly dumb to lose them over this. Clearly they can see when people are abusing the system, so why not warn them before they go over the threshold for getting fired?
Your terms of employment matter more than a EULA, and at the pay scale in question they can be expected to be literate or hire a lawyer. I’d be quite surprised if they weren’t given clear instructions the first time they used the system at a company big enough to have had lawsuits before.
“Incredibly good” is a value judgement we don’t have evidence to assess but I don’t think you could support that claim here in any case: people who break ethics rules on small things are pretty likely to break them on big things. No mstter what else they’re bringing to the table, that’s a risk.
Money is fungible. I will not accept an employer controlling what an employee does with compensation period. That opens too many doors for top-down systemic abuse. There is only an objective, ill defined by the company, and likely so extremely creepy like "we get higher productivity numbers when you eat at the company cafeteria, so we want to nudge you there."
No. No. No. No. Go to hell. Seen the company store thing before. Not doing it. Not inviting that back into the world. Take the fetish of programmable cash/scrip and shove it.
And until we talk about wage theft seriously, I am not willing to even budge that most employers have an actionable harm committed against them. Again, the collective/corporation cannot resist the urge to conspire against the individual any more than the individual is known to get the most out of the machinations of the collective. No one at the table has clean hands, but the collective through scale has far dirtier hands than by average the individual does.
The section on de minimis meals covers what is allowed. Buying toothpaste and groceries doesn't fall under that exclusion. Employees doing this were inadvertently causing Meta to commit tax fraud with unreported fringe benefits.
the reason can also be laws, taxes etc. some incentives can be deducted. however if it is being deducted and the irs finds out, the company can get in trouble. this is speculation as I don't know what it's like in the usa, but is true for some countries in europe.
I had mixed feelings until I read the quote “better not to waste the credit”. That attitude rubs me up the wrong way for (a) a take what you need if/when you need it type perk and (b) someone being paid 400k.
I wouldn’t want to employ someone who saw their sick leave as something they deliberated used up in full each year (even when they didn’t need it). It’s a similar attitude IMO.
One thing I don't understand is, who accepts these vouchers for non-food items?
Asking this as someone who is not familiar with this particular system. I lived in countries where I got meal vouchers, but every place that accepted them only allowed me to buy food with them, and they outright refused to sell anything that can't be eaten (if they even sold anything like that)
Personal meals are 100% employee income. Business meals are 50% employee income and 50% business expense. Which is the real issue. If nsa / irs / sec catches Facebook under policing , they will take a pound of flesh from Facebook, instead of the finger sticks from the employees. same way, banks get fined for under policing money laundering.
De Minimis Meals
You can exclude any occasional meal you provide to an employee if it has so little value (taking into account how frequently you provide meals to your employees) that accounting for it would be unreasonable or administratively impracticable. The exclusion applies, for example, to the following items.
Coffee, doughnuts, or soft drinks.
Occasional meals or meal money provided to enable an employee to work overtime. However, the exclusion doesn't apply to meal money figured on the basis of hours worked (for example, $2.00 per hour for each hour over 8 hours), or meals or meal money provided on a regular or routine basis.
Occasional parties or picnics for employees and their guests.
...
Section 13304 of P.L. 115-97 changed the rules for the deduction of food or beverage expenses that are excludable from employee income as a de minimis fringe benefit. For amounts incurred or paid after 2017, the 50% limit on deductions for food or beverage expenses also applies to food or beverage expenses excludable from employee income as a de minimis fringe benefit. However, food or beverage expenses related to employee recreation, such as holiday parties or annual picnics, aren't subject to the 50% limit on deductions when made primarily for the benefit of your employees other than employees who are officers, shareholders or other owners who own a 10% or greater interest in your business, or other highly compensated employees. For more information, see Regulations section 1.274-12. While your business deduction may be limited, the fringe benefit exclusion rules still apply and the de minimis fringe benefits may be excluded from your employee's wages, as discussed earlier.
Still an issue with under policing, but the deductible limits have changed and the "Occasional meals or meal money provided to enable an employee to work overtime" is specifically called out as an example of permitted de minimis examples.
Note the occasional and meal. This wasn't intended for every day or non-food items.
Remember that this is delivered. With the markup for that, $20 covers a McDonald’s breakfast and coffee with a couple dollars to spare. Even if the food is cheap, having a personal taxi deliver it is not.
$20 is what I would plan to spend on a decent (not fancy setting, just not low quality) meal in SF. For waited service, I would budget $30, excluding even non alcoholic beverages. Could be $5 less though, if you go out of your way to find lower prices.
Same in the other west coast cities and NYC, except Portland. Portland is probably $5 less.
Note that the article says the meal credits are for prepared food delivered to a Meta office location, so the meal credit also includes cost of delivery:
> Staff based in smaller offices without a canteen are offered Uber Eats or Grubhub credits, for example, for food to be delivered to the office.
I'm definitely not the person who would normally leap to the defense of the bigtech employer firing somebody, but I have absolutely no sympathy for people who fiddle expenses.
The company doesn't provide a laundry detergent/wineglass/acne pad benefit. They provide a food benefit. If they give you uber eats or doordash vouchers and you choose to spend it on something that is not food, you are committing expenses fraud.
You may think to yourself "all dollars are green, what's the harm?" but it's not even close to ambiguous for me. They provide that voucher for food. If you spend it on something else, that's exactly the same as if you just stole the money.
If they were really that concerned and it really was that critical, they should have limited it in some way or have been auditing it and issuing warnings before it got to the point of termination. When an employer offers a perk like this, it’s their responsibility to ensure it’s used properly and to monitor its usage, not the employee.
More likely what happened is this was a reason to fire someone they didn’t want anyways. The fact the enforcement is uneven also exposes them to additional liability. It’s likely any one of these employees could sue for wrongful termination, if they were not given a written notice of the proper usage of the perk.
When I go travel with work I get some money per day to cover meals. I can use that to only buy acne pads if I want as long as someone else is not paying for my food.
Isn't this the difference between a voucher benefit and an expense claim though?
Let's say you make employee of the month and receive an amazon voucher to be spent "treating yourself" but instead use it to buy a gift for your spouse.
Is this fraud? You made no false claim about how you would use the money. You did receive it with a specified use though.
What if your employer gives you a £500 a year raise and states it is to cover the additional costs of work from home. But you already have a nice chair so you but groceries. Is that fraud?
Seems borderline.
Your “what if” scenarios are changing the situation in material ways. This case sounds pretty straightforward: they were told the rules, chose not to follow them, and are unlikely to get anywhere legally unless they can demonstrate that management knew and approved of their actions.
I think it is fair to assume Meta lead by example. Is this black and white thinking something you would expect of Zuckerberg?
It's not up to Zuckerberg.
Expensing food is tax deductible. Allowing people to buy whatever they want is taxable income.
The only companies that would allow their employees to buy whatever they want are those that aren't worried about getting audited.
I assume so, but the difference here is the people who want to buy services from Zuckerberg want to buy them a lot more than they don’t want to buy them, and in this case, Meta does not want to buy services from this employee a lot more than they do want to buy services from this employee.
While I don't disagree, it still seems rather crass to immediately fire people for it. Surely you'd first tell people to knock it off before firing them?
Of course that sort of assumes that the firing wasn't the end goal.
My understanding is that some people were fired, others were warned. This was most likely done by number of times they exploited the system. Say tens of infractions compared to a few.
There likely was some threshold which some went over and everyone fired should have known based on written policy.
> should have known based on written policy
Ah yes, it was in the EULA. Which everyone always reads.
If you've got an otherwise good employee it's incredibly dumb to lose them over this. Clearly they can see when people are abusing the system, so why not warn them before they go over the threshold for getting fired?
Your terms of employment matter more than a EULA, and at the pay scale in question they can be expected to be literate or hire a lawyer. I’d be quite surprised if they weren’t given clear instructions the first time they used the system at a company big enough to have had lawsuits before.
“Incredibly good” is a value judgement we don’t have evidence to assess but I don’t think you could support that claim here in any case: people who break ethics rules on small things are pretty likely to break them on big things. No mstter what else they’re bringing to the table, that’s a risk.
Money is fungible. I will not accept an employer controlling what an employee does with compensation period. That opens too many doors for top-down systemic abuse. There is only an objective, ill defined by the company, and likely so extremely creepy like "we get higher productivity numbers when you eat at the company cafeteria, so we want to nudge you there."
No. No. No. No. Go to hell. Seen the company store thing before. Not doing it. Not inviting that back into the world. Take the fetish of programmable cash/scrip and shove it.
And until we talk about wage theft seriously, I am not willing to even budge that most employers have an actionable harm committed against them. Again, the collective/corporation cannot resist the urge to conspire against the individual any more than the individual is known to get the most out of the machinations of the collective. No one at the table has clean hands, but the collective through scale has far dirtier hands than by average the individual does.
Publication 15-B (2024), Employer's Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b
The section on de minimis meals covers what is allowed. Buying toothpaste and groceries doesn't fall under that exclusion. Employees doing this were inadvertently causing Meta to commit tax fraud with unreported fringe benefits.
the reason can also be laws, taxes etc. some incentives can be deducted. however if it is being deducted and the irs finds out, the company can get in trouble. this is speculation as I don't know what it's like in the usa, but is true for some countries in europe.
I had mixed feelings until I read the quote “better not to waste the credit”. That attitude rubs me up the wrong way for (a) a take what you need if/when you need it type perk and (b) someone being paid 400k.
I wouldn’t want to employ someone who saw their sick leave as something they deliberated used up in full each year (even when they didn’t need it). It’s a similar attitude IMO.
(c) being paid 400k by someone worth >$100b on their work.
One thing I don't understand is, who accepts these vouchers for non-food items?
Asking this as someone who is not familiar with this particular system. I lived in countries where I got meal vouchers, but every place that accepted them only allowed me to buy food with them, and they outright refused to sell anything that can't be eaten (if they even sold anything like that)
Most likely they were in the form of UberEats or Doordash credits, which can be used to purchase retail items like the ones described in the article.
> Some had been pooling their money together
Why is this against the rules exactly?
"Staff are given daily allowances of $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $25 for dinner"
Doesn't it seem quite extravagant to pay 20 USD for breakfast or lunch? Are the 70USD taxed?
Personal meals are 100% employee income. Business meals are 50% employee income and 50% business expense. Which is the real issue. If nsa / irs / sec catches Facebook under policing , they will take a pound of flesh from Facebook, instead of the finger sticks from the employees. same way, banks get fined for under policing money laundering.
That was changed recently. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b
... Still an issue with under policing, but the deductible limits have changed and the "Occasional meals or meal money provided to enable an employee to work overtime" is specifically called out as an example of permitted de minimis examples.Note the occasional and meal. This wasn't intended for every day or non-food items.
Remember that this is delivered. With the markup for that, $20 covers a McDonald’s breakfast and coffee with a couple dollars to spare. Even if the food is cheap, having a personal taxi deliver it is not.
Not extravagant in high cost of living areas.
Have relative restaurant pricing in 'high cost areas' in the US changed since the 2010s?
I remember SF as being about as expansive as about anywhere else for the equivalent quality.
$20 is what I would plan to spend on a decent (not fancy setting, just not low quality) meal in SF. For waited service, I would budget $30, excluding even non alcoholic beverages. Could be $5 less though, if you go out of your way to find lower prices.
Same in the other west coast cities and NYC, except Portland. Portland is probably $5 less.
Note that the article says the meal credits are for prepared food delivered to a Meta office location, so the meal credit also includes cost of delivery:
> Staff based in smaller offices without a canteen are offered Uber Eats or Grubhub credits, for example, for food to be delivered to the office.
Honestly McDonald’s plus delivery is probably going to hit 15-20 dollars these days.
Show me the person and I'll show you the crime. -Stalin
This was a person they wanted to let go and needed an excuse to get rid of that would save them severance and lawsuits, I'd wager.
That quote is actually attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, one of Stalin's top goons.
"In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees"
They clearly work hard to find opportunities to impact employees.
Facebook is on the way down. These are the signs.