I actually fail to see what is logical here. And I would go further by saying it is neither logical, nor fair.
First the basic point. Why should an employee be taxed for a service he is not making use of. That's a government trying to get more tax income than what they are entitled to, hidden under the guise of simplification. We are equal under the law, and therefore, theoretically, we are equal under taxes. It is irrelevant that someone has, or does not have access to such a canteen, if they are not making use of the facility, the net outcome is the same, and therefore, the taxation should be the same.
And then a point could be made about the relevancy of taxation in the canteen example. (Although it should not be forgotten that it was just a randomly quantified example for the sake of argument). But let's say that company A decides to provide a canteen, with food sold at cost price to its employees. This turns out to be 20% cheaper than eating in a random other canteen "at market price" (i.e. charging you for cost price + company B profit).
Now you are actually taxing the fact that company A decided to make the effort to setup a canteen, hire cooks/canteen employees, probably make a qualitative effort to offer better food, and not seek profit on the effort, when compared to company B, offering food at a higher price as it includes profit.
Congratulations, in a context of decreasing food quality offered by catering services world-wide, your taxation approach just further de-incentivized potential quality over taxation income. Further fully disregarding the fact that to offer a catering service, company A had to make investments, is employing personnel, buying food, etc, and is, therefore, already contributing more to global tax revenues for the state.
Furthermore, you are also unfairly putting non-profit catering services at a disadvantage, as, they too will be taxed more, as they are also offering their food below "market price". (Not too far-fetched, as such efforts are being set-up, with success, for school canteens, focusing on local, organic food, at operating cost-price)
¯\(°_o)/¯
The baseline assumption that everyone has access to the canteen and uses it is the company's fault for not implementing a more detailed system.
Or you could consider a canteen an improvement of the working conditions for the employees, which will help boosting productivity, and therefore revenue, and, consequently, tax incomes. After all, are we taxing companies with air conditioning, good office lighting, or private office space? Because they are having a competitive advantage when compared to companies without..
That is the subject of a legendary Japanese story about judge Ōoka Tadasuke, pretty well known in Europe, and something Swedish children probably know.
Ōoka hears the case, and then rules that the jingling sound of the beggar's coins is enough compensation for the "stolen" smell.
(Ōoka was a real historic figure; the story may be apocryphal.)
If the company provides cheap food it undercuts the local competition and the town as a whole suffers. Making the tax punitive like this would make the "price" of a subsidized company canteen very high. Either the employer would have to pay to subsidize and pay the employees more (so pay twice) or the policy would be unpopular. Or it's Sweden and everyone is fine with it because Sweden.
I disagree with that take as an argument for taxation.
Let's assume, for the sake of a counter argument, that a company stops providing their canteen service, and, instead, all employees bring their own lunch from home. The local "competition" is still not getting the hypothetical customers they had hoped for. So should the employees be taxed because, by bringing their own lunch, they are not bringing business to the local restaurants and the town is suffering? Or should we tax the supermarkets because they are undermining the local restaurants by allowing the employees to eat cheaply?
My argument is that imposing a tax because some hypothetical other scenario is potentially not happening is wrong. At best, it's an excuse to levy an extra tax, by bringing forward the fallacy that other business are being hurt. Or worse, it is forcefully coercing employees to participate in the economy at a higher cost than what they were prepared to pay, and determining for them what the cost of the lunch of an employed person should be. (Either by forcing them to eat out, or by taxing them so that the cost of canteen+tax is similar to eating out).
Where there could be room for taxation is if the food is provided below cost price, as the employees are then having an advantage in nature that could be considered part of a salary. But even if the food was provided for free, if we estimate an average meal to cost $5, and for 20 days of work a month, that would be $100 of equivalent salary. Is that really worth the administrative hassle?
The general principles in play are that
1) any benefit is taxed according to its equivalent cash value. (How much money would the employee need to pay to get an equivalent thing, if they paid out of pocket and without any cooperation of the employer)
2) A benefit "occurs" by being granted, not by being consumed.
In the cateen situation there is also a special simplification rule in play, where a generic cash value is defined each year for breakfast, lunch and dinner that is to be used as basis for taxation (almost) no matter what the actual costs for the meal is.
The benefit can be constrained to individuals, but then you usually get into fairness arguments and most people rather take the equivalent salary increase instead if given the option.
Either way, it is not going to be fair.
For this reason, most companies simply rather not offer free parking.
Sounds like this meets the definition of racketeering
It's just a bad tax policy that creates weird incentives ("use the canteen even if you don't need it"). Let's keep the word racket for criminal enterprises and antivirus companies.
Which is fine in general, just not specific to this particular tax.
If we think this tax is a racket, we should equally think that all taxes are a racket. That's because your "Try not paying it" argument applies to all taxes.
If we think this tax is uniquely bad, there should be another reason that it's bad. Which is my point.