If what you said was how taxation worked, a hand tool manufactuting company giving hammers they make for $1 and retailing for $2 to workers building a shed on their property would be increasing the workers' income tax bill by $2. Of course, in reality the workers get no income tax bill on the hammer given to them for work and the company can get a $1 tax writeoff from the opex of making the hammer.
Suppose a company could transfer an asset to an employee and have its value set as the employer's cost. A company could make a bunch of volatile investments and see which ones pay off. Then the ones that go south get sold back into the market as a tax loss and the ones that do well get transferred as compensation to employees at the purchase price instead of the current value, reducing the tax liability of both the employer (no taxable gain) and the employee (less taxable income). What would happen if any employer could do that with any employee and any asset?
Conversely, there is a separate carve out for "employee discounts", which is essentially the employer offering its employees its own products for something in the neighborhood of its own cost. Why? It's not in any way a principled accounting distinction, it's because it's harder to use for tax avoidance at scale, because then a soap company can give its employees a discount on soap, but people only need a finite amount of soap and then the soap company can't use it for cars and real estate and stocks.
That's not how it works...The value would be the FMV at the time of the transfer to the employee. The cost basis would be the employer's cost. The income to the employee would be the net difference.
What would happen if any employer could do that with any employee and any asset?
They can't, because tax laws have addressed this situation for almost 100 years...
there is a separate carve out for "employee discounts", which is essentially the employer offering its employees its own products for something in the neighborhood of its own cost.
That carveout only applies to products being offered for the employee's own consumption unrelated to the needs of the business. Internal use of a company's own products for the needs of the business does not result in additional GAAP or tax deductions (meaning, if that product cost X to make/provide but they charge external customers Y, the only deduction is X, not Y).