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. Businesses now have to look into providing incentives, employee rewards & recognition schemes, mental health upliftment practices, and whatnots of the woke world. While these seem to be the norm already, companies are now pushing the envelope by offering tax-saving facilities for employees to avail when they make business-related expenses. Employees are always on the lookout to increase their in-hand salary. By offering them services that help them reduce their tax, it's a win-win situation for both the business and its employees.

One of the ways this could be achieved is by disbursing tax-free meal amounts to your employees. According to Indian federal law, the income tax bracket ranges from 5% to 30&. Under the Income Tax Act Section 17(2)(viii), food allowance can be provided to your employees which is completely tax-free. Under this act, you can offer a food allowance of Rs 50 per meal during working hours. If you decide to provide 2 meals during the day, it comes up to Rs 100 per day. If you have the weekends off policy, your employees work approximately 22 days a month. The food allowance racks up to Rs 2200 per month which is Rs 26,400 per annum. This means that your employees can save tax on Rs 26,400 annually if you provide them with a food allowance. This is definitely not a small amount and your employees will be grateful to you for being so thoughtful towards their savings. It will also instill goodwill and faith in them towards your company which in turn helps in forging long-lasting employee bonds.

Now the question remains how to disburse the amount to each employee? How to keep track of the meal amounts being used? How to ensure that the food allowance is used for the food itself? These burning questions are answered easily by EnKash- a smart corporate card and expense management platform that can sort out all the issues. EnKash offers a gamut of corporate expense cards- both credit and preloaded cards. EnKash meal cards are easy to use, convenient and versatile. They can be used at all food and beverage merchant outlets including restaurants, sweet shops, etc. Employees can use this card either physically at an outlet or a digital outlet for online food delivery or online payment. Meal cards can either be issued physically as a plastic card or digitally as a virtual card. 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. EnKash meal cards also come with an option to get onboard their smart and intuitive card management platform that can allow you to keep a track of all expenses on all cards from a single dashboard. It is PCI-DSS Certified and RBI Compliant so there is no hassle of federal compliance. The platform helps you in maintaining a real-time check on all spending while it happens on the meal cards so you can rest assured that the expense is well within the authorised limits and merchants. You can also remotely block the card if it seems like it has fallen into wrong hands. The preloaded nature of these cards helps in safeguarding against fraud as the expenditure cannot go over the amount present on the card. These cards can be issued directly from the cards platform and can be activated instantly through e-KYC. One of the major benefits that the finance team enjoys with meal cards is the paperless process of disbursal and reporting. With a remote-friendly platform, finance managers can monitor the cards from anywhere and take action with a single touch of a button. Audits are easier because of flawless digital bookkeeping and maintenance of expense records on a digital database that is secure and backed up on the cloud.

Enjoy this host of benefits and empower your employees with a tax-free meal plan. Boost spirits and sales without worrying about additional overheads. EnKash is here to back you up in your journey to make your business smarter. Join our family today!