It sounds similar to the faang employee buses in SF.
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.
> If the company provides cheap food it undercuts the local competition and the town as a whole suffers.
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?
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.