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A Fair Telecommuting Budget?
homework asks: "Last night, I got a call from my boss asking me to define a budget for me to work from home. What items should I include in the figures so that I can show that the use of my home and my personal equipment can be compensated for fairly. Should I include my salary into the figures? Has any other Slashdot reader been in a similar situations and what was the outcome? Were you treated fairly?"
Should I include my salary into the figures?
I really don't know why you're asking us that - ask your boss if he wants your salary in the numbers or not. Or better still, just use your initiative and give him the figure and explicitly state whether or not it includes your salary, based on $X K p.a.
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I'd pay my company money to telecommute. Less gas, less wear and tear on the car, less lunches out, less clothing requirements, less stress from the commute (and office politics), ability to start cooking dinner early, etc. It'd save me $100/week easily.
Our few guys that work offsite generally bill us for their cable/DSL and a phone, landline or cell, for about $100/month. We don't pay for home office space and we don't pay for mobile WiFi connections (except for the executives). We provide the laptop and other machines and they can expense a few things here and there, like a switch or router or KVM, but everyone can do that.
The IRS (or tax man for those who live in the real world and not the US) is probably the place to ask.
I'd just go and pay a good accountant for an hour of their time and get them to help you out. They know what is and what isn't deductable as business-related expenses and can help with deciding on what to charge the company for the use of space within your home for their gain.
There are very location specific taxation rules about how much space and what level of working from home you must do for it to be considered a legitimite business related expense. You'd have to include details for all that stuff.
Budget for a new PC - something reasonably modern. Budget for a broadband internet connection - you'll need a decent bandwidth back to the office to be truly productive these days; even M$ Word files crank in at over a meg for simple documents.
Don't forget to budget for high quality office furniture if you need it - a good, large desk and a VERY high quality and comfortable chair. You'll want a filing cabinet, stationary - some notebooks, pens, blank CDs, post-it notes, etc.
Do you need a printer, scanner, photocopier, fax machine, extra phone line, mobile telephone, etc to do your job. Price them and include them if you do.
Remember that all the computer equipment and lighting will use power. Work out roughly how much power (my power bill very literally doubles if I run my machine 24x7.
There are lots of things - it comes down to what equipment you realy need to successfully perform your job. If they want a budget to set you up at home, then give them a detailed breakdown of costs involved. They'll tell you if it' too fat and you can trim it until they're happy with it.
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It's really pretty simple, just don't try to "get away with something". Try to keep work and home things seperate as much as possible, for example, try to have a single room as a dedicated office. Try to have 1 machine that's dedicated to work, etc. For things that are shared between business and home (cost of your net connection for example), try to figgure out what percent of the time it's used for work and use that percent of the cost.
A lot of times it seems like people either try to cheat their company into paying for more stuff than they need to do their job, or for significantly better stuff than they need to do their job (if, say, you'll only be using SSH to talk to servers via command line, then there's no reason to try to get the company to pay for a bleeding edge machine when something a generation or two old will do just fine).
On the other hand, a lot of people let themselves be screwed by just eating the costs of things like a desk and chair, or a router (for some reason everyone manages to get at least part of their internet bill paid).
In the end, you probably won't get the company to pay for everything that you cite as a cost, but the difference might be made up wholly or partially just buy things like the money you save on commuting, the money you save on health care by not getting sick from stress from having to go into the office every day, etc.
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There's definitely an advantage to telecommuting. I've been doing it for about three years now and it's worked out pretty well. When defining your expenses though, don't look to get compensated for every home expense that you can. In most cases, your boss will work out the cost of having you as an employee in the office versus having you work from home. At my office, there's a big advantage to having people telecommute, as the space is expensive and there are perks to being in the office (lunches, massages, etc.). In that case, it's a bit easier for my company to figure out the operating costs per employee. I think that some compensation for your connectivity is reasonable, but maybe only if the company already pays your regular commuting costs. Do they pay for your gas? Should they pay for your bandwidth?
There are very location specific taxation rules
Not only tax rules. Some jurisdictions require that if you are earning an income in your home, that you have to have a business licence/permit for that address. Which then causes the municipal government to ask: "Is this address zoned for non-residential purposes?"
Of course, if you are telecommuting you can probably fly under their radar for ever, as long as you don't have co-workers or clients visiting.
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