So that was free money for your employees? When you calculated how much an employee cost you to employ you didn’t include that amount? When you set pay rates you didn’t also factor taxes and benefits paid by you for a total compensation cost package?
If an employee cannot earn enough to cover their entire compensation, including taxes and benefits paid directly by the employer, then you will lose money on that position.
You may have wrote the check but your employees earned it or you would not have hired them.
Did you learn that in your high school economics class?
That’s how I used to think, too.....before I ran my own business for 40 years.