硅谷表示对公司免费员工餐收税是个馊主意

　　For years, many tech workers in Silicon Valley haveenjoyed free meals — one of several cushy perksoffered the likes of Google, Facebook, and countlessstartups. But complimentary grub could become athing of the past if the Internal Revenue Service hasits way.
　　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 RevenueService)落实了收税意向，这些免费食品就将成为过去了。
　　A report on Tuesday by the Wall Street Journalrevealed the IRS is pushing to tax employees for their free meals. Companies would have to addin the value of free food when calculating employee tax withholding.
　　《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。
　　News of a potential tax on free meals has many worried in Silicon Valley, where all-you-can eatbuffets are a basic recruiting tool. They’re also a subtle way to get employees to work longerhours by giving them no reason for them to leave the office except to sleep.
　　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。
　　“Having food available or catered in is kind of expected of most tech firms, so this is a bit of aconcern,” admits Steve Sarner, VP of Marketing, at the social networking site Tagged, whereemployees get at least one free meal a week cooked up by nearby restaurants in SanFrancisco’s Financial District.
　　社交网站Tagged公司营销副总裁史蒂夫o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。
　　Nathan Grady, a front-end engineer at Weebly, a service that lets users build web sites withcustom software tools, called the idea of taxing free food awkward. The practice is a socialcatalyst that makes it easy for a company’s staff to talk to one another, he said. Weebly makesthat easy enough by serving free catered lunch daily.
　　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o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。
　　“You start doing that, well then, do you start taxing free coffee as well?” Grady said. “It justdoesn’t make sense.”
　　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。”