This is stupid as someone who would work remote for a pay cut. I will pay for the electricity, laptop, etc. myself.
I’d much rather have them pay hourly workers for commute time and reimburse in-office workers for gas/bus/subway costs.
California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
121–130 of 462 posts
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#122I’m all for workers protection but by this logic possible workers should get their commute costs covered by additional pay and at some point maybe the negotiated salary should be the default pay.
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#123Some quick napkin math: Say you work 100% remote, 8 hours a day. That's 2080 work hours a year, out of 8760 hours. That means you need to be connected to internet, have electricity, etc. 23.74% of the time - let's round that up to 24% Say a worker pays $600 / year for internet, $2400 for electricity / year, and - dunno - $1500 for your cellphone / year. So that's $4500 / year, and your employer must cover approximate…
At that point it’s basically another benefit so I don’t think that’s super terrible for employers
Yeah to give some context the average cost that employers pay for health insurance in the USA is $1,251 per month. For the big tech companies it's often higher due to better coverage/location.
So this is nothing. Employers will not flinch at this.
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the context of this is whether you should be reimbursed for the cost associated with an extra room if you choose to work remotely for a company that has offices, even if those offices are in higher CoL areas. (There's certainly an argument for providing a stipend for a co-working space for a fully remote company.) No one is arguing that a dedicated office isn't desirable. It's a question if someone else should pa…
> if you want one. I think it's not a matter of want, given the kinds of situations I laid out. In my situation, I have ADHD and I'm autistic. If you want me to work I need to be alone to work. It's not a want or a desire. I cannot work in a room full of people and noises, so putting me in one is just the same as expecting me to code without a keyboard. My employer gives me a computer, why is it such a stretch that t…
A company is probably not going to give you a private office either. (Maybe they would for ADA reasons? Don't know IANAL.)
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#125Many young people or those cheering for employee/consumer rights do not seem to understand that this does more net harm than good. For small businesses and startups, this can amount to millions of dollars of additional expenses. Like any economically rational entity, your employer is going to respond by reducing headcount, not hiring in CA anymore, cutting costs in your annual raises, or some combination of the above…
Remote people are/will get paid less than on-site people on average, with this in mind I don't think these (relatively small) additional costs will have a significant effect.
The only issue I see is with the extra paperwork this will bring.
Having said that, I still think this is a wrong measure which creates bad incentives (not trying to save money on the costs since they're partially covered by employer). This should just be a part of the compensation. Alternatively, a fixed rate for all remote workers (which would also solve the bureaucracy).
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#126I like the idea, but not the implementation. I think it should be done as a tax credit for the employee or the company instead. Doing so creates positive incentives for companies to hire remote workers in California. Requiring the company to pay up by force of law disincentivizes companies from hiring remote workers in California. I also think that it would be more equitable since an employee’s home office setup belo…
Your heart is in a good place, but... No more tax complexity, PLEASE. Let's stop using the tax system for encouraging/discouraging behaviors.
That's literally one of the purposes of the tax system. It's to encourage and discourage behavior.
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#127Presumably this standardizes a category of expense reimbursement which is not subject to federal and state taxes.
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#128Someone I'm close to is an exec in the architecture and engineering industry and during covid told me that companies are going to go back to office because of the nightmare dealing with these kinds of issues.
He made the point that, what happens if your employee gets hurt working from home? It's a silly example but the employer could be liable for some reason since the employer could have failed to provide a "safe working environment".
Not sure if this actually could happen in reality, but an employer has to think about these possibilities and determine the risk (and mgmt overhead) of remote vs in person
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#129Some quick napkin math: Say you work 100% remote, 8 hours a day. That's 2080 work hours a year, out of 8760 hours. That means you need to be connected to internet, have electricity, etc. 23.74% of the time - let's round that up to 24% Say a worker pays $600 / year for internet, $2400 for electricity / year, and - dunno - $1500 for your cellphone / year. So that's $4500 / year, and your employer must cover approximate…
Office costs are easily 10x that. Meanwhile, should employers also reimburse employees for commuting costs? Why not? Those costs probably exceed the wfh costs to the employees.
Does CA require the reimbursement of commuting costs? If not, is it not fair to view this new requirement as a backdoor way to increase return-to-office pressure?
Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
It becomes equivalent if the company buys the newspaper subscription for the company and you have access to it. This whole area is a gray mishmash of arguments (does buying pizza for the office count as an expense or a salary item? Depends on frequency, the tax courts, etc).
Add frequent flier miles, "kickbacks" of a couple percent on credit card expenses that are reimbursed, clothing (such as suits) and commuting expenses that are not reimbursed, but uniforms (and related) that are deductible, etc. As you say it's a mishmash that doesn't have a real basis in some overarching principles.
> but uniforms (and related) that are deductible
Not after 2017, I think?