"Side Bar" WTF

Re: The Christmas bonus

ObiWayneKenobi — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:11:14 GMT

Ironically one of the worst jobs I had was also one of the few to ever give a Christmas bonus (it was $100 which wasn't a lot, but I wasn't expecting anything at all).

Re: The Christmas bonus

serguey123 — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:24:50 GMT

PJH:
Xmas decorations

Wait... people actually do that? I though it was some sort of marketing ploy or a silly movie prop

Re: The Christmas bonus

PJH — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:07:20 GMT

Ben L.:
serguey123:
In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.
You mean you don't have 40 days of christmas? Fascinating.

It would appear to be not much more than that for the US - there's a general impression out there that, of those that are full-time employed, don't actually take that much time off; Wikipedia's numbers for 2003 (average paid annual leave 12 days, against say, 25 in the UK) seem to bear this out unless something drastic has changed in the past 9 years...

Unless you're alluding to the fact that Xmas decorations up in October don't seem to raise an eyebrow, in which case it's not too different in the UK.

Re: The Christmas bonus

Ben L. — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 02:30:54 GMT

serguey123:
In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.

You mean you don't have 40 days of christmas? Fascinating.

Re: The Christmas bonus

serguey123 — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:24:35 GMT

In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.

Re: The Christmas bonus

boomzilla — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:09:43 GMT

spamcourt:
But, and here's the fun part, they still had the tax for it withheld from their salaries. So they actually made less money this December than the previous months.

Woohoo! Interest free loans! I guess those public employees really care about their employer.

Re: The Christmas bonus

spamcourt — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:57:15 GMT

In Spain, due to the crisis, the government decided to not pay the christmas bonus this year to public employees (which amounts to 1/14th of they yearly salary). But, and here's the fun part, they still had the tax for it withheld from their salaries. So they actually made less money this December than the previous months.

Re: The Christmas bonus

Cian — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:49:29 GMT

Cat:
Zemm:
I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

There's a number of countries where there are specific schemes designed for this purpose. Here, non-cash benefits of any description get converted to a cash equivalent for tax reasons, but one single, sub-€250 benefit per tax year is actually exempt. If you go over one per year or over €250, the voucher/prepaid CC firms can do the entire tax/social insurance payment for the company. Obviously this works out as the voucher costing a hell of a lot more than the face value but means no tax return required for what are probably PAYE staff.

Interestingly on a WTF level, the accountant's site I found with a good explanation has been hijacked to have payday loan links in the text so I'm not going to link it.

Re: The Christmas bonus

bgodot — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:27:34 GMT

Sadly, there are legal reasons they can't give you all those little bits of crap (toys, t-shirts, morale events...)

When Microsoft was sued in the class action by temps, that was one things the plantiffs pointed too as evidence that they were just like employees. So now we can't even use the ping-pong table in the break room...

I got ~$15,000 from that suit, but I wouldn't have filed for it on my own. It cost me more than that in the required breaks between contracts they have now. The jerks who filed it (I worked with one of them for a short while) ruined it for everyone.

Re: The Christmas bonus

CodeNinja — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:56:10 GMT

I didn't receive a layoff notice or a pink slip, so I'm chalking this up to a win at this point.

I hear, for those of us who were here on Christmas Eve, that one of the executives came around and wished everyone Merry Christmas, and told them they could leave early. I took PTO though, and left town.

Re: The Christmas bonus

joe.edwards — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:17:23 GMT

No cash, but two weeks paid vacation was nice (a week more than I'd technically accrued).

Re: The Christmas bonus

Evilweasil — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:04:29 GMT

I got a 40-hour bonus. My wife spent it before I had even left the office...

Re: The Christmas bonus

Mole — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:37:09 GMT

So did you all get what you wanted for Christmas from your employer? We all got a choice of a bottle of Jack Daniels or Irish Cream (50ml) with the caution of "Do not drink it on the premises". I think I downed mine before I got back to my desk, and seemingly, so did most people.

Re: The Christmas bonus

Ben L. — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 06:28:20 GMT

Zemm:
Cat:
Zemm:
I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.
Not the US. Hint: it's the middle of summer here.

You live on the sun? Cool.

Re: The Christmas bonus

Zemm — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 06:26:54 GMT

Cat:
Zemm:
I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

Not the US. Hint: it's the middle of summer here.