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

Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 203 posts

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#51

Post by ghaff »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #47
cgb223 wrote: post #34

How do you do taxes for something like this? Like lots of employees working in lots of different states/countries, no “home base”. Is there an easy way to do it?

there are payroll companies like https://justworks.com/ that have entities in each state to deal with the wage tax issue. that's the "easy" way as far as i know.

My understanding is that it's not "just" handling payroll taxes, unemployment, etc. There can also be paperwork around establishing legal entities which, of course, gets even more challenging as other countries are involved. It's mostly not that big a deal for large employers but it can be a fair bit of overhead for a small company--with the result that they don't want employees just working anywhere. Mitchell Hashimoto has written about this some with respect to HashiCorp.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#52

Post by [deleted] »

samr71 wrote: post #43
almost_usual wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for the location of said office. (You can find great engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV and pay SV rates) If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker, and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any very-low COL city).

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#53

Post by ghaff »

samr71 wrote: post #46
ghaff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Yes, to the sibling comment, there's the potential issue of pay adjustments that may (or may not) leave employees better off. But, in general, some percentage of employees do seem to want full remote and the majority want to work from home at least half the time. I agree that it's a negative for people who want to go back to an in-person office most days before time. But I assume that there will be many comp…

These all potentially could or could not happen, but I think they're possible given multi-year mass WFT. I'm not guaranteeing these, but I've seen them discussed. For the company: - Lower productivity (burnout, people not adequately connected, people not on same page, more difficult to manager remote workers, more distractions) - Less innovation - Less / No company culture - Less employee satisfaction; harder to recr…

I was mostly responding to "I'd argue it certainly won't be great for the average worker"

Many of us were working remotely before the current situation. I guess that makes me not average. But many people are saying they're looking forward to not going back to a commute every day even if they stay in the same general area and maybe go in a day or two a week for collaboration/meetings. The big negative for me has been working remotely during a pandemic with my usual 100 or so days of travel curtailed.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#54

Post by [deleted] »

samr71 wrote: post #43
almost_usual wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for the location of said office. (You can find great engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV and pay SV rates) If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker, and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any very-low COL city).

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#55

Post by [deleted] »

samr71 wrote: post #43
almost_usual wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for the location of said office. (You can find great engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV and pay SV rates) If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker, and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any very-low COL city).

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#56

Post by [deleted] »

samr71 wrote: post #43
almost_usual wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for the location of said office. (You can find great engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV and pay SV rates) If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker, and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any very-low COL city).

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#57

Post by gamblor956 »

samr71 wrote: post #15
setpatchaddress wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state of California is horribly mismanaged Compared to what? Texas? Edited to add: Wikipedia: > The economy of the State of California is the largest in the United States, boasting a $3.2 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2019.[9] If California were a sovereign nation (2019), it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy, ahead of India and behind Germany.[10][11]…

What does a large GDP prove? It is the largest state after all. A smaller state, that doesn't happen to contain some of the country's best real estate and most productive industries (say, New Hampshire) could be better run, but of course with a smaller GDP to show for it. California's large GDP could then be in spite of its management, not a product of it.

Tech isn't CA's only industry...

CA's large GDP is the result of the diversification of its industries. CA has the largest agricultural industry in the U.S., the largest manufacturing industry (yes, people still make things in the U.S.), the largest entertainment industry, and the largest tourism industry.

And that doesn't even take into account the purely local-market GDP in the Bay Area, LA/OC metro area, or San Diego, each of which boasts a local GDP larger than the total GDPs of most of the Midwestern states, or, for that matter, industries where CA has a large market but isn't a national leader, such as finance, biotech, or resource extraction.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#59

Post by gamblor956 »

cgb223 wrote: post #34

How do you do taxes for something like this? Like lots of employees working in lots of different states/countries, no “home base”. Is there an easy way to do it?

Employees don't realize that taxes are the reason companies generally don't allow for remote positions. It's not just payroll taxes at stake.

In a nutshell, having an employee in a tax jurisdiction creates a taxable nexus for the company, meaning that they can be subject to income taxes, commercial taxes, sales taxes/VAT, etc., in that jurisdiction. (And note: this has been part of domestic and international tax law for decades.)

For example: Company C in CA has an employee, E, who moves to NY to work remotely. Company C is now subject to NY income taxes, and must now collect NY sales tax if they have any sales to NY customers (though note: in the US many states now require sales tax collection even in the absence of physical presence, so C may already have been obligated to collect NY sales tax). If E is a programmer, the NY income tax exposure is probably very low, but if E is in sales, they could be looking at significant NY tax liabilities based on how they may be required to apportion (aka allocate) their income between CA and NY.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#60

Post by gamblor956 »

ghaff wrote: post #51
rojobuffalo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are payroll companies like https://justworks.com/ that have entities in each state to deal with the wage tax issue. that's the "easy" way as far as i know.

My understanding is that it's not "just" handling payroll taxes, unemployment, etc. There can also be paperwork around establishing legal entities which, of course, gets even more challenging as other countries are involved. It's mostly not that big a deal for large employers but it can be a fair bit of overhead for a small company--with the result that they don't want employees just working anywhere. Mitchell Hashim…

There is paperwork, but you don't need to establish a new entity in every state/country where you have an office or employee. You can simply register your existing company as a "foreign" business in all of the jurisdictions where it is not legally incorporated (and this is what most businesses do).

Generally, you only have a location-specific business created if there are location-specific benefits acquired, or benefits avoided, by doing so. (Like say, access to tax credits, or avoidance of certain compliance responsibilities).

Post reply on HN