> If that was the reason they would simply not pay for commutes at all, as is normal in most other countries.
Paying for commute is mostly a tax thing. It's the same kind of adjustement as doing BYOD or giving employees PCs that have passed their business depreciation value instead of doing leases.
It's way easier to do with train transit, as train companies will give traceability/limitations on the commute and it's way easier to explain that just paying for a week's worth of gasoline or a car's insurance, or other costs.
If a country doesn't have any arrangement to make these expenses easier to pass on the company, I see how commute would just be cover privately by the employee.
> "private" railway companies were set up with immensely valuable government funded capital assets and would never have been able to operate without them,
Fundamentally no business of significant size operates without any gov. oversight nor preferential treatment. Tim Cook shaking Trump's hand is not the outlier, and at the size of a railroad company you better be in good terms with regulators if you want anything done.
Paying for commute is mostly a tax thing. It's the same kind of adjustement as doing BYOD or giving employees PCs that have passed their business depreciation value instead of doing leases.
It's way easier to do with train transit, as train companies will give traceability/limitations on the commute and it's way easier to explain that just paying for a week's worth of gasoline or a car's insurance, or other costs.
If a country doesn't have any arrangement to make these expenses easier to pass on the company, I see how commute would just be cover privately by the employee.
> "private" railway companies were set up with immensely valuable government funded capital assets and would never have been able to operate without them,
Fundamentally no business of significant size operates without any gov. oversight nor preferential treatment. Tim Cook shaking Trump's hand is not the outlier, and at the size of a railroad company you better be in good terms with regulators if you want anything done.