06.12.2009 10:41 am
How might a cell phone tax change your company cell phone habits?
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
For years, employees have avoided taxes on their business cell phones, considered ‘fringe benefits,’ by the Internal Revenue Service since 1989. Now the agency is weighing a proposal that could strictly enforce that tax.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the IRS has proposed employers assign 25 percent of an employee’s annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit.
The IRS move, which is spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea, would mark a stricter enforcement of an existing rule that classifies employer-provided cellphones as a taxable benefit, rather than a 24-hour-a-day work tool.
Under a 1989 law, workers…
