[petercooper]

Yeah, it should get caught somehow otherwise companies would just gift their employees every month ;-)

So I suspect gifting would still be tax inefficient, since he'd have paid taxes on the dividend and then employees would pay tax on the gift.. whereas skipping the dividend and just getting bonuses could cut out one whole layer of tax.

[m_eiman]

There's no tax on gifts in Sweden, and the dividend tax is 30%, compared to 50% or so on salaries. So if the IRS doesn't consider it a compensation for work (which they will, of course) gifting the dividends would mean less tax.