Employee satisfaction is one of the cornerstones of a successful business. To keep your employees happy, just paying salaries on time is not enough anymore.<\/p>\n
Many businesses are introducing modern perks for employees, including meal cards for employees. This service is quite popular in the corporate sector and has proven effective in boosting productivity. This blog will help you understand everything about meal cards and their benefits.<\/p>\n
A Tax Free Meal Card is a prepaid card<\/a> for employee benefits used for food expenses that qualifies for tax exemption under Indian income tax rules. It helps employees save tax on meal allowances while enabling businesses to offer structured, compliant benefits.<\/p>\n Instead of giving meal allowances as taxable salary, companies provide meal benefits through regulated instruments like meal cards, which are treated as tax-exempt perquisites within prescribed limits. These cards work like debit cards but are restricted to food-related purchases at eligible restaurants, grocery stores, food delivery platforms, and office cafeterias.<\/p>\n Now, the question remains: how to disburse the amount to each employee? How to keep track of the meal amounts being used? These burning questions are answered easily by EnKash<\/a>\u2013 Asia\u2019s 1st Spend Management Platform, helping businesses with a wide range of products and solutions that enable savings, operational efficiency, and fast-track growth.<\/p>\n EnKash offers a gamut of corporate cards<\/a>– both credit and preloaded cards. These meal cards are easy to use, convenient, and versatile. They can be used at all food and non-alcoholic beverage merchant outlets, including restaurants, sweet shops, etc. Further, one can use these meal cards to get food delivered from online apps like Zomato, Swiggy, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Chai Point, and Cafe Coffee Day, etc.<\/p>\n Employees can use this card either physically at an outlet or a digital outlet for online food delivery or online payment. Meal cards for employees can either be issued physically as a plastic card or digitally as a virtual card.<\/p>\n You can either preload the meal card with the monthly meal allowance amount or you can top up the meal card daily with the daily food allowance amount, as per your convenience.<\/p>\n These meal cards also come with an option to get on board their smart and intuitive card management platform that can allow you to keep track of all expenses on all cards from a single dashboard.<\/p>\n The meal cards for employees are PCI-DSS<\/a> Certified and RBI Compliant, so there is no hassle of federal compliance. The platform helps you maintain a real-time check on all spending while it happens on the meal cards<\/a>. So, you can rest assured that the expense is well within the authorized limits and merchants.<\/p>\n One of the major benefits of a meal card allowance is the tax exemption that employees get on their salaries. Receiving a lunch allowance as part of the salary enables employees to save on taxes annually.<\/p>\n Certain allowances are provided to salaried employees under the Indian Income Tax Act as non-taxable income. Among the most effective of these tools is the prepaid meal card<\/a>, which serves as a popular method for offering food allowances to employees.<\/p>\n Meal card-based allowances are covered under Section 10(14), read with Rule 2BB of the Income Tax Rules under the Indian Income Tax Act. However, the practical applicability of the tax exemption related to meal benefits is most often enforced under Section 17(2)(viii), which specifically deals with perks provided by employers to employees in the form of food and beverages.<\/p>\nHow\u00a0 Tax-Free Meal Cards Work<\/h3>\n
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\nThe company allocates a fixed monthly meal allowance to employees via the meal card.<\/li>\n
\nTransactions are restricted to food and beverage merchants (MCC<\/a>-based controls).<\/li>\n
\nAs per Indian tax guidelines, meal benefits provided through non-cash modes (like meal cards) are tax-exempt up to the allowed limit.<\/li>\n
\nEmployers get centralized dashboards for monitoring usage and ensuring regulatory compliance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/span>Are you wondering how the employees will handle the meal card?<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>5 Benefits of Using EnKash Meal Cards<\/span><\/h2>\n
Use as a Physical or Virtual Card<\/b><\/h3>\n
Flexible To Recharge<\/h3>\n
Easy Tracking<\/h3>\n
No Restrictions<\/h3>\n
Tax savings<\/h3>\n
<\/span>Food Allowance Exemption under Section 10<\/span><\/h2>\n