The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies to Work from Home. Some May Never Go Back
I like the idea of work in a way, but I also think the in person connections are valuable. Maybe a company could have a hybrid of that idea, allow people to work at home but also have a office that&#x27;s sorta more like a co-working space but open to their employees only.<p>Then another thing that&#x27;s lame about remote work is you have to limit the location people can work remotely due to employment regulations, so if your company is in California you aren&#x27;t allowed to hire someone from Ohio without doing a bunch of extra paperwork and expenses. I got a job offer for a company in San Francisco but wasn&#x27;t sure about it 100% or if it&#x27;d last so I thought trying remote would be interesting and then transition but the HR person told me no even though she was interested in me. But I guess they didn&#x27;t want to register in other states, paying taxes in multiple states, payroll, some states require worker comp and probably applies if you work from home even, etc as it would create a bigger Nexus for a company with a handful of requirements for a state the HR person has never even visited or has an address in the state even (so they have to pay for a virtual office service, a agent for the company in the state and add extra costs and administration since some states won&#x27;t accept a out of state address for some paperwork). So many companies unless it&#x27;s already big with locations all over the US rather just deal with a single state for now... Then businesses large enough to meet the requirement have to file equal opportunity reports, what location do you put down? Someone&#x27;s house (then fill out a separate form for every house - so 50 employees is 50 locations if no office in the area they could visit?), the virtual office address or what? Sounds like some say the office they report too, but if you worked remotely for a company in California from Ohio where they don&#x27;t have a brick and mortar regional office seems to complicate things. Maybe in that case you report to their California office even if you never fly to or visit California? Seems like the laws were written never considered the possibility of working remotely and different answers depending on who you ask.<p>But the whole remote thing can get even more confusing, like apparently if you work for a company in New York remotely and a few other states they wants you to pay income taxes even if you never visited the state due to them considering it telecommuting even if you never psychically commute there, so double taxes even though your state will let you credit taxes paid to others, I expect NY would be much higher... Plus there&#x27;s conflicting info and other things if you look up this type of stuff.<p>Someone lived in Tennessee and was found to owe Taxes to New York. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biglawinvestor.com&#x2F;new-york-telecommuting-tax-penalty&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.biglawinvestor.com&#x2F;new-york-telecommuting-tax-pe...</a><p>&gt; If you work remotely for a company based in New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Nebraska or New Jersey, even if you physically never step foot in those states, you may be subject to state income tax in those states.<p>Which doesn&#x27;t make sense according to what the HR person said, if they had to setup in your own state to hire you wouldn&#x27;t it credited as payroll taxes in your state instead of New York? Then if you lived in Ohio full time and tried to claim New York taxes as a credit for working full time, I wonder if that&#x27;s a huge red flag as they&#x27;d probably assume you psychically commuted instead of working remotely. Especially if you live in a lower tax state where due to the credit given to higher taxed New York so you ended up owning nothing to your state, paying all your income to state not close enough to commute to everyday by car.<p>Then I know Delaware is popular for incorporating too even if a company puts their HQ in California... Surprised everyone at the GooglePlex in California isn&#x27;t considered to be working remotely in Delaware?<p>Then some states say you owe taxes just for checking email while waiting in the Airport during a layover, so some companies track where employees are and pay taxes in multiple states, but some companies aren&#x27;t capable enough to deal with this stuff since the big assumption is a employee is just staying at one location and seems like a grey area. So technically if you send your employees to a conference or trade show in another state, opening up another can of extra compliance, however I feel like a lot of companies probably just ignore this unless they make it a regular thing.<p>Then remember seeing if you are a contractor like a plumber, a business and employee is expected to file and pay taxes in every single city they visit a customer so that can add up too - but not every state allows cities to tax people and some have proposals to simplify this. Some contractors might visit a city one off if they aren&#x27;t big enough but I guess some might just limit their service area but I know we had a roofer come from a hour away once, and tons of little small cities in between. So if a one off job, and then some cities expect you to keep filing even if zero and not all cities even put the forms online. I know one idea was to just let the state administer the city taxes as part of the regular state tax forms, then the state would forward the money to each city what they are owed and take a 1 or 2% cut for doing it, but cities wasn&#x27;t happy with this idea and rather do it themselves. Then in some states like Michigan, was reading tax software won&#x27;t even handle cities.<p>Confusing stuff... I guess this is something you&#x27;d have to probably hire a knowledge HR person to help you deal with this stuff, but who knows if the know all the little details when dealing with multiple states. I guess for a single person it&#x27;s not worth it, so easier just to tell someone from Ohio no if they aren&#x27;t willing to move to California right away. Seems like every states have stuff like this, be cool if some state encouraged fiber internet, remote work and relaxed regulations for remote companies - I guess instead people are forced to move even if they could work remotely technically but can&#x27;t due to the bureaucracy and red tape burden getting in the way. So sounds like states will end up losing both residents and income instead of making some money they make zero. Same with how some affiliate programs banned people from Ohio participating, sending them a email with a short notice to stop sending traffic. However I guess the larger corporations like Google probably can hire people remotely nationwide since they are big enough to handle the extra burdens imposed by every state where they have people working remotely. Then cities and county has extra stuff too... Also wonder how OSHA works with remote, if you are on the clock and run to the bathroom in your house and ended up tripping and stubbing your toe... Is that a accident report just as if you worked from the office? Then what about the employment posters if working remotely - and even some cities have their own too... I guess make them available on the internal website maybe as I doubt someone would hang those on the wall in their bedroom. but another thing to monitor and keep up to date across all the locations people work remotely from. Also looks like some states even require you to reimburse them for internet access, but some make you track what&#x27;s person or business? Sounds a bit annoying but might be a good perk... Free internet from your company if you work from home!<p>Maybe the tech and culture isn&#x27;t holding back remote work, but the government putting all these artificial limitations. I wish we&#x27;d have some modern tax reforms and even take advantage of tech. My favorite idea I&#x27;ve had for a while would just cut all payments for a flat tax, sorta like how PayPal takes a transaction fee for every payment. Have the gov take a transaction fee and have some agency that&#x27;s responsible for redistributing it to states and cities, so as a business it&#x27;d be super simple.<p>Stuff like this is a bit discouraging, you&#x27;d think 2020 remote work would be easier. As someone who dreams of a startup, I think making a MVP&#x2F;prototype and seeking investors to relocate to a bigger city, renting office space would be the best path and just hire people locally would be simpler. Unfortunately I feel it&#x27;s a disadvantaged though since talented people all across the country or even world that could be a good fit but can&#x27;t just easily hire them remotely due to all the red tape. Just seems crazy if you hire someone remotely from across the country, you have a pile of regulations to follow like a brick and mortar business locally would. So I could see why a business in California would say no to wanting to deal with hiring people remotely, they have so much stuff in Ohio to deal with just for one person. Seems easier to just say no or require relocating to where the company is located. Just seems like the ways the regulations are or read doesn&#x27;t really consider remote at all. Not sure if places would embrace it, seems like remote businesses would cut down on things like property taxes too... Why cater to Google across the country when you could try and force them to build a local regional office?