<prompt> Human: Purely out of curiosity and minor annoyance, the company takes the left over budget and divides it up to employees via a gift card during the holidays. This is separate from other bonuses through the year.While you are given a gift card the taxes for that sum are removed from the payroll check for your normal salary.The minor complaint I have is that I would rather just have this added to my normal direct deposit salary. They provide me a very comfortable lifestyle to which I am thankful but the whole gift card thing seams cheap since I try to save more than I spend.My question: Why give a gift card and remove the taxes from payroll. The most evil yet logical reason I can think of is a branded card yielding a part of the transaction fee kicked back to the company which is not the case here. There is also a cost to getting bulk gift cards, envelope, letters, stamps etc.What am I missing?  <response>: I mean they might just think it feels better to have something that looks like a gift compared to just more money.Taxes are taken out because they have to be. Some companies balance this by gifting the card with a value that includes the tax amount or close to it so it balances out, but not all do this. 