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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?"
The IRS defines what things constitute a home office for the purpose of deducting those expenses from your income tax. That's a pretty good guide. For instance, you'll discover that a space which you use 100% for business purposes is easier to account for than a space which you use 20/80 or 50/50... so look at setting a small room aside as your office. Divide your budget into capital costs and recurring costs.
On the other hand, maybe all of that is overkill. Your actual cost of occasional telecommuting may be as simple as "enable an SSH and IPsec gateway on the corporate LAN, pay a monthly DSL/cable modem/frac-T1 fee".
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.
Internet
Find out the full cost of the highest speed internet you can get - include the phone line or minimum legal cable rate (that is different than basic cable usually by $15-$20 per month). Get it in writing or an email from the cable or DSL company.
Phones
The question here is home phone or cell phone. If your company provides cells, then this issue is dead. If your company doesn't then find out what the 1500 minute per month or better plans cost and submit that for your budget.
If it's a home phone, Packet 8 and Vonage are great and give you business class features for $29-$39/month. Your boss will like unlimited long distance and the fact that you have real voice mail and the ability to handle multiple calls elegantly.
Fax
The question here is do you need to send them or just get them. If you are just getting them, your company's fax server or eFax is great. If you are sending, get a fax machine or multifunction device that can work without the computer being turned on.
Supplies
Ink cartridges are expensive. Figure out how much printing you will do and add 25% for crappy inkjet scammage (i.e cleaning mode & so on). Then calculate ink jet carts+$20/mo for supplies (pens, paper, etc...)
Up Front.
You might get $150 up front for furniture if you ask nice. You'll also need to buy a multifunction/fax machine ($150 for a good one), pay any set up fees for DSL/Cable, purchase a good router if you don't have one ($50).
So here's the deal:
-- $G