alt Hacker NewsThat is more likely a result of legal requirements. As a general rule any personal benefit you get counts as your income and is taxed accordingly. Expensing is not, instead counting as a business expense.
To avoid people just forming a personal company and declaring everything they spend a business expense and thus not taxed there are rules around what can be counted as a business expense.
If you instead want to take your salary in the form of Fiber One bars, but pay taxes on that spending in dollars, then your accounting department might have had fewer issues since they would not be mixing legally distinct costs and accidentally committing financial fraud.
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Why is it a personal benefit? If I am onsite for 5-10 days, I am likely going to have 1-2 bars/day - especially if I am working a high-stress engagement where actually leaving the client site would have taken away my ability to execute to the required level of service.
At some point, policing what each employee eats and how they spend their maximum "per day/per diem" total allowance becomes a cost-drain.
I have been in orgs where some people were frugal and bought essentially groceries, so they could eat in their hotel room - some of that was dietary or health choices and restrictions. Eating restaurant food every single day for 3-meals/day is not a healthy choice (especially years ago when portion sizes were typically far too vast in some countries/regions). Then, in the same group - we had staff who would determine an average size meal - and then ensure that the tips they left would max-out to their daily maximum allowance, to "spread-the-wealth" so-to-speak.
Neither was fraudulent - we were allowed a daily max budget (it was not a per diem), we still had to submit receipts - heck, in our region if you wanted to spend your budget entirely on alcohol, there were (at the time) no red flags.
If that was true the OP's manager wouldn't have been able to fix it. If finance rolls over it cannot be a legal issue.
Per diem is only a taxable benefit if it's not tracked and receipts aren't submitted.
In the UK, if you are unlucky enough to get a payroll audit they go straight to reviewing expenses for things that should have been taxed, so yes you end up adding friction to the claimants to stop that happening.