BOSTON (MainStreet) -- Unemployment rates may be high and layoffs abundant, but for many companies -- especially those reliant on technical expertise -- retaining employees is crucial.
Attracting and retaining the best is also often the reason given by companies for the staggeringly high pay drawn by top executives, although in some cases there's another factor to be considered: High CEO pay can actually lower corporate tax bills, says a study released today by the Institute for Policy Studies.
In many ways, the standard bearer is for employee perks is Google, which boasts of its dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, car washes, dry cleaning, commuting buses and even benefits for new and adopting parents.
"Ordinary taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for excessive executive compensation," its report reads. "And yet they do -- through a variety of tax and accounting loopholes that encourage executive pay excess. These perverse incentives add up to more than $20 billion per year in forgone revenue. No meaningful regulations currently limit how much companies can deduct from their taxes for the expense of executive compensation. The more firms pay their CEOS, the more they can deduct off their federal taxes."
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