Sometimes there is some kind of matching by the employer. You can
> almost never receive a non-taxable "gift" from your employer. In this
> case there was no matching, though happily it has triggered the
> company to set up a fund for such circumstances, funded by the
> company, but administered by a committee of employees. I am pretty
> sure the payments from this fund will in fact be taxable income.
I have just received notification from the employer (billion dollar company, tens of thousands of employees) that the disbursements from this fund are not taxable income and are in fact treated as a gift for tax purposes.
Basically the company has set up a 501c(3) organization, administered by employees, to collect contributions from the company and the employees, and to evaluate requests for emergency assistance from the fund. Only employees are elegible to receive payments from the fund.