[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...