IRS Taxing Employer Provided BlackBerry or Cell Phone
Does your employer provide you a BlackBerry or cell phone or pay for your wireless service? Do you use that device for personal purpose too? The IRS is considering three ways to tax you for that.
Certain employee benefits, like health care, are not taxable. Personal use of an employer provided BlackBerry or cell phone is not one of them. The IRS published Notice 2009-46 on June 8. It's on pages 13-15 in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2009-23. They are asking for public comments about the three methods it's considering.
1. Minimal Personal Use Method. There are two proposals under this method. Under the first proposal, if the employee can show to the employer that he/she carries another personal cell phone and uses that phone for personal matters, then the employee won't have to pay taxes on the company provided BlackBerry or cell phone. Under the second proposal, there would be a threshold of say X minutes. If the employee can show he/she used the BlackBerry or cell phone for personal purpose for no more than X minutes or he/she used it only for certain exempted types of calls (emergency for example), the employee won't have to pay taxes for such personal use.
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