[miga]

Sharing software to be tested for free seems an unalienable right of the company, and indeed many companies distribute free keys to testers.

Here author talks about taxing software that remains with the employee, as if it were "gift" or "taxable benefit" of employment, not an exercise of unalienable right to share software for testing.

Sounds more like tax office logic, instead of common sense.

Taxable benefit would occur if Microsoft bought software of others and gifted it to employee. Or if Microsoft could not reasonably expect people to actually test the software, or allowed them to resell it.

It seems like this article does not distinguish non-monetary "benefit" from employment from necessity that the company gives free license to use its software for testing.

[ambentzen]

> Taxable benefit would occur if Microsoft bought software of others and gifted it to employee. Or if Microsoft could not reasonably expect people to actually test the software, or allowed them to resell it.

Isn't that exactly what they did?

[offices]

In TFA, it's 3rd-party software.