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Comment by tomaytotomato | Hacker News Reader

"Salarium Argentum" - salt money (or money/allowance towards salt)

It would be funny to see my payslip with a tex deductable section saying "Salt allowance". Imagine if modern day employers paid their employees in other things rather than currency that were tangibly valuable (would be chaos I am sure).

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We have things like a fitness stipend, wellness stipend, learning stipend… all with cash value earmarked towards a specific use.

Ugh, don't get me started on how HSAs and FSAs are just a handout to the financial industry.

My mom worked as an accountant for a big meat-processing factory and she was partially paid in their products: meats and sausages :)

Also, coal mine workers in my country used to get few tons of coal once a year (useful for heating their homes in winter).

Unfortunately, for tax purposes your employer is supposed to calculate a cash value of those bonuses, so you don't actually pay your tax in sausage.

Ex-wife worked in a brewery and had a weekly beer allowance. She didn't drink, so she'd pick it up once every 4 months and give it to her ecstatic flatmates.

Still part of union negotiated salaries for brewery workers in Germany. Since almost all breweries also have non-alcoholics, that part of the payment is aparebtly more often taken in the form sparkling water and the likes.

I can vividly imagine your wife's flatmates joy once a quarter so!

I think it's also common in candy factories. New employees tend to eat a lot, but after the first week or so consumption declines considerably.

In the former USSR, jobs in meat processing and sausage making plants were desirable because even though wages weren't very high the workers could steal a lot. This was so normalized that they didn't even think of it as stealing, it was just "carrying out".

Carry from the factory every nail.

You are the owner here not a guest.

> Imagine if modern day employers paid their employees in other things rather than currency that were tangibly valuable

As highlighted in other comments, this happens all the time. For example there are huge tax benefits to getting paid in “non-taxable” ways.

Or suddenly there’s sales tax on top of the income tax.

Many countries have meal (food) vouchers besides salary:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal_voucher

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/793aud/are_meal_...

Fun fact: there is a beer allowance (Haustrunk) in Austria if you a work in a brewery. And that allowance is tax free.

That sort of thing makes more sense than you'd think - if people earn money at a brewery, spend money on beer, and handle decisions about large amounts of beer on a daily basis then it encourages them to perhaps find an excuse to 'spoil' beer then take it home.

If everyone gets a ton of free beer anyway, then most people won't be tempted to nick some booze.

Making it tax-free makes some sense, because nicking the booze is also tax-free.

based on the breweries in the USA i've visited, it's very common here, too. i somehow doubt it's because all the employees would otherwise be beer thieving criminals, though.

Like stock options? Yeah, even that is contentious.

Sounds exactly like health insurance.

Central bank digital currencies where the currency can be spent only on certain goods, and can be set to expire.

A lot of people get paid in part with stock options that don’t even have tangible value necessarily.

You might find a SALT deduction when filing taxes.

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