Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 201 posts

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#51

Post by saalweachter »

jt2190 wrote: post #32

To put some context on this, this is a “think piece”, not an official position of a large multi-national bank: > Deutsche Bank says its research is designed to spark debate around a series of important topics. > Report author Mr Templeman said he'd had a lot of feedback on the report. "A lot of people aren't impressed at the idea of another tax, however, some have seen it as an interesting policy that governments can…

The colloquial term for this sort of defense is "JAQing off"; "I'm just asking questions, you can't get mad at me for just asking questions."

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#53

Post by inquirerofsorts »

FreshFries wrote: post #12
fyfy18 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we also penalize people who cycle to work, and pack their lunch at home? On paper they are no different than people working from home.

Every option is on the table, when we're "not paying into the system", but your examples are not the issue discussed in the article.

> your examples are not the issue discussed in the article

From TFA:

"By working from home, people aren't paying for public transport or eating out at restaurants near their places of work"

It's exactly what the GP comment referenced.

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#54

Post by silvester23 »

svrtknst wrote: post #34

Counterpoint: Tax employers additionally, since they now face lower rent and spend less on office supplies and coffee. Or, hell, tax high-income earners. For instance bank executives working for shady banks

In the article, it says

> The tax would be paid for by employers and the income generated would be paid to people who can't do their jobs from home.

But somehow nobody in this thread seems to have read that sentence.

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#55

Post by varispeed »

The ideas are always around taxing the middle class, the hard working engineers, lawyers, doctors and sold to the masses as taxing "the rich", but in reality the rich never pay as much tax as middle class (as a proportion of income). Tax is often used as an instrument to discourage certain behaviour and this proposal seems to be also hitting engineers, but also people on lower income who for example assemble parts at home. It seems like the goal of DB is to discourage home working disguised as a help to those who cannot work from home. It's kind of "we know better than you what is good and you must obey or give us your hard earned money." Why people are not ashamed to put such proposals forward?

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#56

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #31

Wow, so because I save myself and my employer money by not mindlessly commuting to work everyday I should pay an extra tax? That's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard so far. It's a bit like taxing cyclists 10 % of their income because they don't support the car industry...

I think the point they're trying to make is that the money you and your employer are saving is not going into the economy as it was before, which is having a net-negative effect overall.

> Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society.

So it's plausible that there is actually a problem here with the very sudden change of workforce distribution and how it affects society and the economy. But addressing it by simply taxing employers more for work-from-home jobs is definitely short-slighted. But in the short term it seems that something needs to be done to prop up the system because billions of dollars have left the economy overnight and it will likely never return.

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#57

Post by varispeed »

amf12 wrote: post #40
ThePhysicist wrote: post #31

Wow, so because I save myself and my employer money by not mindlessly commuting to work everyday I should pay an extra tax? That's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard so far. It's a bit like taxing cyclists 10 % of their income because they don't support the car industry...

> It's a bit like taxing cyclists 10 % of their income because they don't support the car industry... Good analogy. But their argument is even worse because they don't look at the other benefits of remote work on the economy.

It is scary that so many so called economists are strangers to the concept of opportunity cost...

Re: Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

#58

Post by darkerside »

The macroeconomics of this make sense, but the behavioral impacts of this could be damaging. For that reason, I'd rather see this framed as a tax credit for essential workers. It ends up being similar, but framed as a positive reinforcement instead of a negative punishment.
Post reply on HN