I found this on a Bulgarian news site, but apparently in the wake of 300,000 Bulgarians losing their jobs, the government has approved a legislated program where bonafide companies can give trade for food instead of money to their employees. They have mandated limits on this form of compensation, but it makes sense to me…if your people are hungry, they need food, sometimes more than they need cash. If a company can’t pay cash, why not let them barter for food. The post-Cold War country has a rich barter history, and this period of international economic instability has provided fertile ground for a government backed barter program. Kudos to them. I wish President Obama would embrace barter to that extent. The Bulgarians don’t have to pay taxes on their food voucher program…
More and more Bulgarians receive their salaries in the form of food barters. Companies en mass hand out food vouchers to aid their budget in the crisis.The state allows up to 60 levs of the salary to be given in the form of vouchers. Only concrete licensed companies have the right to distribute them. Barter monthly pay cannot exceed 180 million levs for a year.”The interest in this alternative form of payment is so great that some of the operators have exhausted their vouchers for 2009,” Teodor Markov, a manager of one of the companies which emit vouchers told the Standart.Using vouchers is financially beneficial for both companies and workers because neither pays taxes on the vouchers’ cost.
