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Comment by PopAlongKid | Hacker News Reader

>that form allowed the company to then tax me on that ‘gift’ as income,

Wrong. There is no "form" needed for taxation, it is required by the IRS (in U.S.) and the company does not "tax" anyone. Employer gifts (other than de minimis amounts) are taxable compensation. (see IRS Publication 15-B for details).

A good employer will "gross up" cash gifts to cover the taxes.

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But surely the embroidering of a company logo on it vastly reduces the value of the item, and this must be accounted for. If I have a new Cotopaxi or Arc'teryx item I can sell it on Facebook Marketplace for 90% of its MSRP. But if it has a fucking TurboTax Information Security Team logo on it I doubt I could get 25%. So I hope this is accounted for in the taxation.

My understanding is that logo'd swag is (usually) marketing expense, not taxable employee gift. If it's a non-cash-equiv gift under $100 in value, it's almost definitely not a taxable income item. If it's more than that, but has the logo on it...

I used to work for a company that was for some reason doing both software and embroidery on clothing.

They gave me once a nice winter jacket... but not with their logo embroidered on it but my nickname.

Needless to say, I'll keep it for a loooong while.

> Employer gifts (other than de minimis amounts) are taxable compensation.

This was a coaster - hard to get more minimis than that.

Why are you so aggressively sure that was an American anecdote?

I'm not. That is why I went out of my way to qualify my reply with "(in U.S.)" to clarify what jurisdiction I was commenting about.

'Wrong.'

> Wrong.

Must you really be this blunt?

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