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California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

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Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#361

Post by mempko »

dataflow wrote: post #164
mempko wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally one of the purposes of the tax system. It's to encourage and discourage behavior.

The purpose of the tax system is to generate revenue, I thought.

Depends on the level of government. For cities and states, taxes generate revenue, but for the federal government, taxes serve a different purpose because the US federal government is sovereign and controls it's currency.

This following is an excellent short video from the late David Graeber explaining why money is debt and what taxes do. While it's context is the UK, it applies to US or any sovereign government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxJW7hl8oqM

For California it's absolutely about revenue. But a dual purpose is to provide incentives/disincentives for certain behaviors. Even states that require taxes for revenue give tax breaks for incentivizing certain things to companies and other groups.

At the federal level taxes serve to mainly provide a demand for the currency, control the levels of money in the broader economy, and incentivize/disincentivize behavior. Unlike cities and states, the federal government must necessarily be in a perpetual state of deficit for the private sector to have a surplus.

To further back up Gaeber's claims, here is a reference from the Bank of England explaining how money is created.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#362

Post by xw3090 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #356
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many 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…

> your employer is going to respond by... not hiring in CA anymore Ah yes, they pay 300k salary to devs in CA but paying for the monitor and chair is a dealbreaker. with this attitude, we'd neber have any rights at all

For devs they pay, and probably have a food truck drive to your house for catered lunch delivery, but not everyone is a dev.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#363

Post by Ductapemaster »

schmookeeg wrote: post #274
535188B17C93743 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0.42/kWh!??! Jesus Christ. I think I'm paying around $0.0629/kWh. Where is this?

Presumably PG&E territory in the bay area. We're in Alameda, who run their own utility and buys their power from PG&E and our rates are $0.15/kwh. I don't know how PG&E still exists as an entity, they were deserving of the pitchforks a long while ago.

Hello fellow Alamedan! AMP is great — very grateful for a little abstraction between us an PG&E, despite it being all the same at the end of the day...

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#364

Post by nxm »

fergie wrote: post #324
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many 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…

> Like any economically rational entity, your employer is going to respond by… A weak argument that can be made about any general improvement to worker pay snd conditions. Its clear that societies that encourage workers rights have the strongest economies.

Where is that true? France has very strong workers rights, and its GDP growth, for example, is significantly worse than that of the US.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#365

Post by 535188B17C93743 »

switch007 wrote: post #248
535188B17C93743 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0.42/kWh!??! Jesus Christ. I think I'm paying around $0.0629/kWh. Where is this?

$0.06?! Jesus, where is that?!

Central Ohio [1]. I didn't realize it was so cheap.

1. https://www.betterbuyenergy.com/ - Zip 43215

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#366

Post by eYrKEC2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #357

Does California really want to make it more expensive to hire remote employees?

If I were an employer hiring for a remote CA position I would just do accounting -- we were going to hire you for $150k, but now it will be $146.3k with an expected $3.7k of expense reimbursements.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#367

Post by nxm »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #185
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many 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…

CA CoL is already high and layoffs happen regardless. I fail to see the downside unless you are a very new startup.

So no new startups? That ultimately hurts wages and offsets any cost savings from employers paying for your home internet which you’d already be paying for anyways

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#368

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #99

Many 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…

Employers are going to reduce headcount to a minimum regardless. And these millions of dollars of expenses aren't 'additional'. They are already been paid for by the employees. Employees shouldn't have to subsidize the business.

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#369

Post by nxm »

sureglymop wrote: post #200
phpisthebest wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont inject reality... If we pass the rights laws and elect the correct people with the correct opinion we can have a utopia... We just have to do it...

Instead, let's actually just not even try because we can't reach perfection and utopia anyway.

Be careful so that your state doesn’t turn into…California

Re: California employers must reimburse remote workers for all necessary expenses

#370

Post by blackoil »

harmon wrote: post #347
brightball wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of many reasons to have a personal LLC/S-Corp in my opinion. Another comment in the thread really nailed this well. If employers didn't pay for commute costs separately, why does this become a line item? The employer does pay for gas and commute costs, as well as cost of living expenses...in a paycheck. I place a high value on my home office setup so I have things exactly as I want them. I also live in a low cost…

I agree, honestly I feel a much better solution to this problem would be to extend the same tax advantages that you allude to when talking about a personal company to W2 employees. Provision a home office? All of those expenses should be tax deductible. BYOD? You should be able to expense a portion of the costs. Pay for internet and power? You should be able to deduct a percentage of costs. Have a work related meal?…

Since tracking of these is painful, in India all salaried employees are allowed a standard deduction which serve same purpose.
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