[cwyers]

I'm not sure I've ever had whiplash as extreme as the point of this article where I thought to myself, "Well finally, someone pushing back against the excesses of VC-funded culture" and the line "we will compensate our employees for a dog-sitter (via a flexible health and wellness stipend)."

[freeone3000]

A flex health and wellness stipend is a fairly regular perk of even large businesses, and it is usually this lax. Mine can be used for an Apple Watch, for instance (due to its heart rate monitor).

[ChuckMcM]

Actually, it could address an interesting issue depending on how it is implemented. If you gave team members a 'perks' stipend you could tax it appropriately, and you could have your employee spend it on the things that were important to them. Then create a way to scan your badge to access a perk and voila, custom perks.

No, I don't actually think it is workable, the two arguments that will pop up immediately are :

1) Just give me more money.

2) I don't want you to know which perks I use

[sowbug]

I think you already reached the same conclusion, but employee salary already behaves the way you describe: it's taxable, and they spend it as they wish.

[civilian]

The nice thing about perks is that they come out as company expenses--- so they don't get hit by payroll taxes or personal income taxes. Which potentially means that you get to double money spent on perks.

You're right that it would be cool if we could customize it. Give people "perks cards", which come out of company expenses (takes advantage of the above avoiding-income-tax multiplier) and let them spend it on whatever.

[ChuckMcM]

There is history here that you may not be aware of, it is a constant battle between the IRS and companies. The IRS insists that companies 'break out' any such company provided services on a per employee basis and include the value of those services in the employee's W2 taxable income field.

Once a company reaches a size where the amount of tax revenue crosses some threshold, the IRS starts bugging you. Apple, Google, SGI, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft are all companies that I know of that have negotiated settlements of one form or another.

[civilian]

Oh huh, I wasn't actually aware of that, but it makes sense! So I guess the loopholes aren't really there to begin with...

[Spivak]

I agree that it feels weird, but wouldn't this fund also help pay for a babysitter? It doesn't seem too unreasonable to consider your pet as a member of the family.