[shagie]

Publication 15-B (2024), Employer's Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits - https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000...

    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.

Meta can exclude the occasional meal enabling a company to work overtime from tax reporting as benefits.

However, once the employee is not using it in a way that qualifies as specified under De Minimis Meals, then it gets into an actual taxable bonus.

The employees that were doing this over a long period of time were causing Meta to inadvertently commit tax fraud. The accounting department probably didn't like that once they found out about it.