If you’re giving gift cards as cash rewards to your employees, you need to report them as income. It doesn’t matter if they’re sporadic, one-time rewards, or regular awards based on monthly performance. It also doesn’t matter if they’re unrestricted cash cards or cards used for specific items, like gas cards or food cards. As long as gift cards have an equivalent cash value – usually stated on the back of the card, in many cases – it is taxable as income.