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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.