Are employer-paid gym memberships treated differently from a wellness spending account for tax purposes?

They can be, and the difference often comes down to how the specific plan is structured rather than what it's called. A gym membership your employer pays for directly is generally treated as a taxable benefit, since it doesn't typically fit one of the recognized exceptions to the general rule that employment-related benefits are taxable.

A wellness spending account can be treated more favourably, but only in certain circumstances — specifically, where the amounts are used for genuinely eligible medical-type expenses that qualify under the kind of arrangement CRA treats as a private health services plan. Many employer wellness accounts, however, are deliberately structured as a taxable allowance precisely because CRA treats general wellness and fitness spending, like gym equipment or memberships, less favourably than amounts that actually qualify as eligible medical expenses under that kind of plan.

This means two employees at different companies, both with a "wellness benefit," can have genuinely different tax outcomes depending on how their specific plan is built and what it's actually used for. Rather than assuming a wellness account is automatically tax-free because it sounds health-related, it's worth checking how the plan is structured and what expenses it actually covers, since that structure — not the label — is what determines the tax result.