The SkinnyPop in the break room may not last. Donald Trump is targeting the office snack.
The president’s signature tax law allows a long-standing business deduction for the cost of food provided to employees to expire, imperiling a workplace perk popularized during Silicon Valley’s dot-com boom that is now an emblem of modern office culture. A well-stocked pantry is now a staple at Wall Street banks, among other places.
US companies that continue to provide office snacks, coffee or on-site lunches will see them taxed after Dec. 31, when the deduction will be eliminated.
The tax change gained little attention as the sprawling, nearly 1,000-page legislation moved through Congress and it isn’t yet clear how companies will respond.
Far from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, Alaska’s fishing industry was spared from higher-cost noshes. The state’s fishermen earned a carve-out in a bid to keep Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s support for the overall bill, which squeaked by only with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote.
No such luck for Maine’s lobstermen, whose senator, Republican Susan Collins, didn’t vote for the legislation.
Free food has become broadly entrenched in workplaces, with 44% of US employers now providing free snacks, double the rate a decade ago, according to surveys conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Trump’s 2017 tax law halved the deduction for employer-provided food and scheduled it for elimination at the end of this year, as the administration sought to lower that law’s budget impact when a host of breaks expired Dec. 31. The new tax legislation Trump signed on July 4 rolled back most of the year-end scheduled tax increases but maintained elimination of office snack-deduction, except for the Alaska and restaurant carveouts.
The catering company didn’t lose clients in 2017, when the deduction was reduced to 50%, he said.
“It’s pretty inelastic,” Sabeti said. “When you take a tax deduction away, the cost is going to go up, but companies will continue to spend, just like if you took away a deduction on a laptop.”
