Telecommute Tax Relief Gathers Steam

coondoggie writes to tell us NetworkWorld is reporting that backers of new telecommuter friendly tax legislation have high hopes that this might be the year that it sticks. From the article: " If passed, the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act would prevent states from taxing income that nonresidents who telecommute to an in-state employer earn while working from home. The legislation is aimed in particular at New York, which is legendary for its stance on nonresident teleworkers. It requires those who sometimes work in the office of their New York employers to pay state taxes -- not only on the income they earn while physically in New York, but also on the income they earn at home. This often results in a double tax when the telecommuter's home state expects tax on the income the telecommuter earns at home."

Comments

It'll never pass

[Jason1729]

This legislation is aimed to help average workers. There's little benefit for big business or legislators. It will never pass.

Re:It'll never pass

[Jason1729]

By that logic, big business should always be lobbying for lower personal taxes.

Re:It'll never pass

[Anonymous Coward]

It does.

Considering all of those telecommuters in India!

Re:It'll never pass

[MindStalker]

Umm most do.. well of course that isn't their primary lobby but its certainly a theme. The important thing is that their telecommuters will now be bringing home money, this will mean that they don't have to provide the next round of payraises..

Re:It'll never pass

[truthsearch]

It has far better chance of passing on a per-state basis. They should heavily lobby the NY state legislature to change their tax code. I'm assuming they aren't doing this currently. But I get the feeling lobbying for anything which reduces state income will be very very hard to pass.

Re:It'll never pass

[Jamil Karim]

Never underestimate the power of an election year. It just might pass.

Re:It'll never pass

[triskaidekaphile]

Not good for big business? Exactly what is the biggest expense that business has to pay in the United States?

Answer: Salary

So please, raise your hand with me if you would be willing to be PAID LESS if you could WORK FROM HOME?

Re:It'll never pass

[Total_Wimp]

This legislation is aimed to help average workers. There's little benefit for big business or legislators. It will never pass.

You have to wonder. The GOP was all hot and bothered about eliminating the capital gains tax which they referred to as "double taxation." Will they fight for relief of this tax which really is double taxation?

The main difference between the two: Rich guys get capital gains while average folks telecommute.

I think the GOP has a chance to show what kind of a party they really are. I hope they surprise me and support this.

TW

Re:It'll never pass

[Mr. Slippery]

So please, raise your hand with me if you would be willing to be PAID LESS if you could WORK FROM HOME?

Doing it now. Really, really glad not to have a 60-mile round trip commute anymore.

Re:It'll never pass

[HTH NE1]

My state taxes my state tax refunds. They treat it as additional income, which is then taxed in the next tax year.

That means that when they take more money than they were entitled to out of my paycheck, they get to use it for a year without paying me for the privilege. Then when I catch them at it and they return it to me, the next year they say are suddenly entitled to a piece of something they weren't entitled to before?

So the government gets a one-year interest-free loan from me, then loans it back to me for a year, and then charges me interest on that!

At least I don't have to telecommute and have to deal with double-taxation from two states. I live close enough to my workplace that I could walk, even in Winter.

Re:It'll never pass

[Nilatir]

Don't forget, however that they're taxing people who can't vote against them.

Re:It'll never pass

[Elemenope]

WTF state are you in? And why haven't you sued them yet for equity? And why aren't there bloody mobs with bloody pitchforks storming the capitol? Though I believe you if you say so, I find this almost hard to believe. Boiling a frog with slowly rising taxes is one thing. Stabbing them in the eye with a skewer is something else entirely.

Re:It'll never pass

[hazem]

My state taxes my state tax refunds. They treat it as additional income, which is then taxed in the next tax year.

That doesn't make much sense to me, since a refund is a return to you of money you over-paid.

The simple answer is that you just adjust your W-4 and have less withheld. Plan it so you always pay a little. Then, if you are correct that you are, indeed, taxed on the returned money, then you'll have nothing to pay tax on. Plus you get your money for the whole year.

It's a pretty simple thing to do, even if payroll hates it. Make a spreadsheet to estimate your income and all the tax deductible things that will happen (mortgage interest, student loan interest, etc). Then using current tax tables, figure out your tax. Divide it by the number of pay periods you have and tell your HR people that you want to set your deductions so that you pay that much. Often, you have to overstate the deductions (I'm single, no kids, an I use 5) then have an additional "fixed" amount taken out as well.

If they can't calculate it, then try to estimate by making a change and seeing how it impacts your next paycheck.

I personally find it a "fun" game to see if I can get my state and federal taxes to cancel out.

But, by the mere fact that you can get out of paying a tax on your return by not having a return makes me think something is being misunderstood by you or your accountant.

Re:It'll never pass

[tehcyder]

My state taxes my state tax refunds

That is the funniest thing I have read in ages...oh wait, it's actually true?

Wow, and I thought the UK tax system was odd.

Re:It'll never pass

[letxa2000]

Which is why this legislation is being proposed at the Federal level.

Re:It'll never pass

[cayenne8]

"It has far better chance of passing on a per-state basis."

Well, pretty much NO state will voluntarily lower their tax revenue willingly. I'm usually a huge foe of the Feds using Interstate Commerce powers, but, this might be one of the few cases I can see where it would be beneficial, and fall under what I think the original purpose for those powers were created for...

Re:It'll never pass

[HTH NE1]

I have a correction. The state tax refund is taxed on line 10 of 1040. However, my state form has me deduct that same amount from my state taxes.

So either the fed is collecting taxes from the state for the state's mistake, or state taxes are withheld before fed taxes, so the fed is entitled to some of the refund they would have taxed had it not been withheld by the state.

Re:It'll never pass

[plague3106]

Um, how exactly will a non-NY resident be able to lobby the state of NY to reform tax laws?

I'm sure the state representitves don't care about non-residents at all.

Employers likely don't care as well, as they already think they are doing the employee a favor by letting them telecommute.

Personally, I think you should be able to drop an entire tax bracket down if you telecommute for more than 50% of your work week. The employee saves money in gas and auto maintence, the employer could get away with less office space, and everyone has some clearer air. The only loser is the oil companies. How sad that such a tax break might lessen their record profits.

Re:It'll never pass

[plague3106]

All states with income tax will tax the refund.

The feds do it too.

I think it stinks personally. As another poster said, you can tweak it so you don't owe or get money back. If you can do that, why tax the overpayment?

You're actually paying a penalty when you overpay your taxes.

Re:It'll never pass

[Anonymous Coward]

This is incorrect - Line 1040 on the IRS is meant to increase your taxable income by taxable refunds, and is meant to recapture taxes only in certain cases.

For the general layperson, this would never apply.

Re:It'll never pass

[scottsk]

I think what was meant is the federal government taxes the state tax refund. Your state taxes are withheld from your paycheck as pre-tax dollars, so when you get a refund this is pre-tax money that must be taxed because it wasn't taxed when it was withheld. This only happens when you itemize, though. Otherwise it's part of the standard deduction's magic dollar amount.

Re:It'll never pass

[AtlantaSteve]

Good grief. This being Slashdot, with all the socialists on one hand and Ayn Rand-quoting twerps on the other, it's astounding that practically NOBODY really knows what they're talking about when it comes to government and taxation.

A state refund is taxable ONLY IF you received a tax benefit from it in the previous year... in other words, only if you itemize. If you itemize deductions, then you get to deduct your state taxes from your taxable income. However, if you later get back some of that money from the state, that makes the amount you deducted on your federal return was too high. Therefore, the feds expect you to reconcile things in the following year.

Far be it from me to defend the IRS, but in this example it's THEY who are giving YOU an interest-free loan for a year. You paid lower federal taxes than you should have due to over-deductions, and get to pay back "last-year-dollars" with "this-year-dollars" that have been weakened by inflation. Besides, everybody who uses the standard deduction isn't affected by any of this at all.

not using infrastructure

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

This is only fair, if you aren't using the infrastructure of the city you shouldn't have to pay for it.

Re:not using infrastructure

[dkoulomzin]

First, they're talking about State taxes, not city taxes.

Second, it doesn't follow that just because you're working outside of the state that you aren't making use of the state's resources. Ever wonder why so many businesses are located in Manhatten? Its not because of the low-low prices of real-estate.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Kadin2048]

I fail utterly to see how I am consuming any resources in NYC by calling/videoconferencing/emailing people there, which are not otherwise being paid for privately. The phone and data lines are being paid for by the recipient of the call. I'm not using their roads, I'm not using their sewer lines, and I'm not using their water (would be paid for anyway), libraries, emergency services, schools, or dog catchers.

If a company wants to have a NYC address, they can have that NYC address: and they should pay real estate tax, corporate tax, and the people who work there should pay income tax. Because they are all using services from that area, by virtue of their physical presence.

Remote workers are not using any resources, and should not be paying any taxes. They should be paying income tax in whatever state they're sitting in while doing the work. It's those states that are getting screwed (if they have reciprocity agreements with NY), since they're actually getting their services used by someone who isn't paying any taxes!

Taxing people on where they're physically located while they do the work is fair for everyone. It gives the municipalities that are actually responsible for serving those people the revenue stream they're owed, and also lets people choose where they want to live based on the tax structure. People should be able to choose where they want to live based on the taxes they're going to have to pay and the services they think they're going to get there. It's a value proposition, just like everything else in life. Only right now, this bizarre system of tax laws keeps people tied to where their employer chooses to be located, even if that's nowhere near where they actually are.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Third, you're feeding a troll named P3NIS_CLEAVER who masterfully started a sentence with one thought that developed into another thought and just kept right on going.

Re:not using infrastructure

[dkoulomzin]

I'm not advocating double-taxation, which I agree would be unfair.

What I'm saying is that the very fact that your employer can employ you at all has at least something to do with taxes at its location. Businesses don't choose NYC for its cleanliness or safety. They choose NYC because it is a great place to do business. That's because of the infrastructure that taxation of wages at least partially provides. So your taxes are bolstering the infrastructure that makes your job possible. (Not that I feel in any way that taxes person A pays should exist soley to make person A's life better, but since you seem to, I'm putting this in your terms.)

Just so you know, if you telecommute to an employer in NYC: if you're sacked, its NY unemployment benefits that you draw. If your actions result in criminal negligence, you'll be tried in NY. Your employer is paying payroll tax in NY. Your rights as a worker are those of a New Yorker, and are enforced in and by the New York legal system. I fail to see how you "fail utterly to see" how a telecommuter doesn't consume (expensive) resources in the state in which he or she is actually employed.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Rob the Bold]

Second, it doesn't follow that just because you're working outside of the state that you aren't making use of the state's resources. Ever wonder why so many businesses are located in Manhatten? Its not because of the low-low prices of real-estate.

I may have eaten a Georgia peach, a Florida Tangerine, a Texas Grapefruit and a California orange today. Not to mention the Oklahoma oil and a car from Michigan. So I guess that one could argue that I'm using those states' resources, too, but please don't. I really don't want to pay state income tax to 48 states I don't work in whose "resources" I indirectly use.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Acid-Duck]

The other side of this is, in theory: if my state awarded company X an amount of Y dollars (or perhaps tax relief for the first Y dollars) in order to help it propser as a new enterprise, as well as create jobs for ppl in the surrounding city, I wouldn't want that grant money to be used to pay someone who doesn't even live in the surroundings and does his job over the internet. When grants are awarded to companies, they aren't simply awarded so that company can make money, but they are given to those companies with the intention that:

- The company X will eventually make money and pay taxes back to the state
- The company X will hire people in the surrounding which will help decrease un-employment
- People who are being payed by company X pay taxes to the state (the one which granted the money in the first place)

Re:not using infrastructure

[WilliamSChips]

What's the state in which you do not work whose resources you don't indirectly use? Because one plus forty-eight is 49, not 50.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Kadin2048]

Just so you know, if you telecommute to an employer in NYC: if you're sacked, its NY unemployment benefits that you draw. If your actions result in criminal negligence, you'll be tried in NY. Your employer is paying payroll tax in NY. Your rights as a worker are those of a New Yorker, and are enforced in and by the New York legal system. I fail to see how you "fail utterly to see" how a telecommuter doesn't consume (expensive) resources in the state in which he or she is actually employed.

I consider this all part of the problem. A person should get the services from the area/municipality into which they're paying taxes. This means if they're doing the work in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas, then they should be paying taxes there on their income, and paying unemployment tax there, and if they get sacked, that's where they'll draw their unemployment from.

What I think needs to be stopped, is the way companies can claim that a worker is a "New York employee," even though they work from New Jersey 99% of the time. They're not -- they're a Jersey-based employee, and they should be compensated accordingly, pay taxes accordingly, etc.

The different jurisdictions for liability purposes are slightly more complex, but it's not as though that's an issue that companies haven't figured out. In most cases concerning negligence by an employee, it's the corporation itself that gets sued, not the employee, so it wouldn't matter a whole lot where the employee was based out of.

It's just generally a mistake to have people using tax jurisdictions that are not the place they're physically located when they're doing the work. Whatever State your brain is located in during the time you're working for the company, that ought to be your tax jurisdiction.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Tacvek]

I should pay state income taxes according to the state in which i am Employed, regardless as to where the work is done, because that is the state that provides the services such as unemployment benefits. However I should pay the local income tax to the locality where I was physically present while doing the work, as they provide services such as Emercigency Medical, etc. Proprty taxes should stay as-is. State sales taxes should be payed only to the state in which I reside, regardless of the location of the store. Local sales taxes should belong to the locality in which I purchased the item if the sale was in-person, but should belong to my home locality if purchased out-of-person such as Electronicly, by phone, or by mail-in catalog. I base all of those statements on the types of services that are provided, and whether I receive them. As for the taxation without representation claims of some other posters, at the state level I should be able to vote for state level matters in any state in which I am employed or reside, as obviously I would have a legitimate interest in those matters. Note that any state representative to Congress would not be a state level vote, because Congress is Federal.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Tacvek]

Sorry about the previous post, Accidentally posted it before being finished.

I should pay state income taxes according to the state in which i am Employed, regardless as to where the work is done, because that is the state that provides the services such as unemployment benefits.

However I should pay the local income tax to the locality where I was physically present while doing the work, as they provide services such as Emercigency Medical, etc.

Proprty taxes should stay as-is.

State sales taxes should be payed only to the state in which I reside, regardless of the location of the store. Local sales taxes should belong to the locality in which I purchased the item if the sale was in-person, but should belong to my home locality if purchased out-of-person such as Electronicly, by phone, or by mail-in catalog.

I base all of those statements on the types of services that are provided, and whether I receive them.

As for the taxation without representation claims of some other posters, at the state level I should be able to vote for state level matters in any state in which I am employed or reside, as obviously I would have a legitimate interest in those matters. Note that any state representative to Congress would not be a state level vote, because Congress is Federal.

Re:not using infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

You bought that fruit, no?

Try another analogy.

Re:not using infrastructure

[kimvette]

I don't know about NY, but in most states unemployment insurance is a separate deduction. Unemployment insurance is just that - INSURANCE, and unfortunately it's insurance you're forced to buy by the state whether or not you want it.

They have NO justification for levying income taxes against nonresident citizens who are not represented by elected officials on their behalf in that jurisdiction, Deduct for UI, sure, it's INSURANCE. Better yet, make UI optional and don't deduct ANYTHING.

Re:not using infrastructure

[HyperTiger]

By this logic, offshored jobs (in India or wherever) should be paying taxes to the state where their employer is.

Re:not using infrastructure

[chunky shit salsa]

yep. he's feeding a troll that made an apparent yet still insightful comment that started one of the more meaningful threads under this article. yeah, he's the troll. and, unless you, in fact are the same troll, you're a fucking idiot and a loser.
care for some corn chips? bite me fuckface

Re:not using infrastructure

[pythorlh]

There's always the chance that he's already paying two states, such as is mentioned in the article...

Re:not using infrastructure

[macdaddy]

I like the analogy. It makes me wonder about something though. Lets say I'm a consultant in state A. A person for Acme calls me from state D and pays me for 2 hours of my time to work on XYZ in their primary state D POP. Do I owe taxes to state D? I may be using the state's resources if the state helped pay for or subsidize any of the fiber infrastructure that I may be crossing. What about states B and C? What if they too subsidized their state's fiber plant and I'm transitting across their network resources. Do I owe them taxes too? The absurdly of the analogy can grow exponentially too. What if state D's power was generated in state E. State E paid for the high-voltage aerial lines to their border and state D paid for the lines to their distribution grid as well as the monthly costs. Do I therefore owe state E taxes as well? The reservoir that provides the city in which Acme built its business comes from state F. Yadda yadda yadda. That is an example of the analogy reaching absurdity but of course our government redraws that boundary often.

taxation without borders

[cez]

Odds are they aren't going to get that around city taxes for telecommuters, such as in Yonkers and Manhattan, but could be a good deal for the state taxation purposes. Although I'd hate to see spammers taking advantage of this somehow.

Re:taxation without borders

[F_Scentura]

I know a good many if not most spammers and scam-artists reside here in Florida, where we don't pay taxes either way.

Re:taxation without borders

[Red Flayer]

City tax for Yonkers and Manhattan doesn't apply to out-of-state workers anyway. Lucky for me.

How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Just Some Guy]

I never really understood this complaint. I live in the midwest. If I do some remote work for a client in New York, how do they expect to collect New York income tax from me? Do they have any legal recourse whatsoever to try to collect?

What if my local employer opens a branch office in NYC. Do I owe NY taxes then, even though I don't work there? What if I do some remote administration for that office? What if they're connected via VPN and I occasionally browse fileservers on their LAN? At what point do I cross the line where they mistakenly think I should pay them something?

I'm glad to see this legislation go through, even though I think it's incredibly stupid that there's a need for it.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[charleste]

Their legal recourse is to first bill you, then get a judgement (in NY) against you, and then your wages (from anywhere) are garnished. You can't just "not pay". Sucks, don't it? As far as how your "locale" is determined - that's up to your employer. I am a 100% telecommuter - in Colorado, and my "office" is in Tampa, FL.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I never really understood this complaint. I live in the midwest. If I do some remote work for a client in New York, how do they expect to collect New York income tax from me? Do they have any legal recourse whatsoever to try to collect?

In your case, you might be able to get away with it. The people who work W-2 jobs via telecommuting don't have that option.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[hal9000(jr)]

1) If you are employed outside NYS, then you don't have to worry.

2) If you are employed by a NYS company and you live in a state that doesn't have an office, then you could get taxed if you enter the state on business (You can enter for pleasure).

3) If you are employed outside NYS by a NYS company, and you have an office in your state that you goto, then you don't pay NYS taxes.

I think on point #2, if you are an at-will out of state employee, your living out of state becuase you want to, then you have to pat taxes. If your posted out of the state, then I don't think you will be taxed because it's not your choice to live out of state.

Check with an account though.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Just Some Guy]

Their legal recourse is to first bill you, then get a judgement (in NY) against you, and then your wages (from anywhere) are garnished.

Should it ever come up, remind me to get a local judgement against Bloomberg for some fictional fee.

As far as how your "locale" is determined - that's up to your employer.

OK, then. Is there any incentive for your employer to list you as a NY employee?

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Red Flayer]

"What if my local employer opens a branch office in NYC. Do I owe NY taxes then, even though I don't work there? What if I do some remote administration for that office? What if they're connected via VPN and I occasionally browse fileservers on their LAN? At what point do I cross the line where they mistakenly think I should pay them something?"

If you never work from the NY office, you're not a NY employee. Remote admin doesn't apply, you have to be phyisically present at NY base of operations for your job (not necessarily your company's base of operations) on a regular basis to be considered a NY employee subject to NY taxes.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[powerlord]

OK, then. Is there any incentive for your employer to list you as a NY employee?

Their offices are in New York, they file taxes in New York, the servers you're telecomuting are in New York, and they don't have any other offices?

A better question is: "Why don't more buisnesses move out of New York?"

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[IAmTheDave]

A better question is: "Why don't more buisnesses move out of New York?"

Financial capital of the world?

Besides, they don't give a shit how you and I get taxed.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[z0ot]

Note that New York State is more than just New York City. The truth is that upstate many high-quality jobs *are* moving to other states due to high taxation, usually in areas where the loss of such jobs can further cripple an already devastated local economy.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[killjoe]

Don't bet on it. There are very good reasons to stay in an area where air travel is cheap, the labor pool is huge, and there are more CEOs per square inch then any other place on the planet (maybe except hong kong).

If you are selling your stuff to businesses you need to shcmooze with them. You need to be able to meet at the ultra chic bar or restaurant to wine and dine the CEO. When you get together you need to be able to talk to him/her in a common vernacular about shared experiences. You can't just pop on a plane from iowa and talk about the mets or the traffic on 82nd.

There is a reason why businesses stay in NY, LA, Chicago or Dallas. Taxes are a just a small part of the whole equation.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Just Some Guy]

The truth is that upstate many high-quality jobs *are* moving to other states due to high taxation, usually in areas where the loss of such jobs can further cripple an already devastated local economy.

The scary part is that many of the upstate residents think their taxes are perfectly reasonable. My father-in-law thinks it's awful that I have to pay for garbage pickup, since the city of Buffalo provides his for free. Never mind that he's paying twice the taxes on half the house that I am; that extra $2500 a year will go a long, long way toward covering a $20/month trash bill.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[jcr]

There is a reason why businesses stay in NY, LA, Chicago or Dallas.

There is also a reason why businesses with their nominal HQ in Manhattan open satellite offices in Hoboken, Greenwich, etc.

-jcr

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get a check from your employer in NY, NYS taxes will be missing. If you want that money back, you will have to file a NYS tax return. On the odd chance you dont get those taxes taken out, when they find out they will get a judgement on you and pull your taxes out of whatever check you do get as one poster has mentioned.

I knew a lot of people that worked in NY but lived in PA. They still had the opportuninty ;) to pay NYS taxes b/c they drove across a line every day. They did get away with PA property taxes, so it was worth it.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[esme]

OK, then. Is there any incentive for your employer to list you as a NY employee?

Inertia. I telecommute full time from Florida (and previously from England) to California. My employer kept reporting my income as CA income. I don't think there's any definite policy on it, though. I wasn't able to get a straight answer from anybody I talked to, and the wording of the tax pubs all lean towards reporting income as CA income. So it was up to me to convince them my income shouldn't be taxable by CA since I performed my work somewhere else.

I got my employer to amend my W2. So now CA seems fine with me not paying them state taxes. Though I don't know how CA and NY law differ.

-Esme

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[aaronl]

Perhaps they think the taxes are reasonable in the big upstate cities, but the people everywhere else aren't too happy. NYC's existence screws a lot of people upstate out of land (for reservoirs and their "protective" legislation), the city types that move north take the City with them, rapidly driving up taxes in those areas, and forcing the locals to move further away from NYC. Most of the state paid 50% of their taxes to NYC, Albany, and Buffalo for the last 30 years, and lost more and more of their communities for the trouble. The taxes drove large chunks of companies, like IBM, out of the state.

Look to the majority of NY State, rather than just the few large cities. Most upstate people don't *want* to live in or near cities, much less to pay for those that do.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Trepalium]

I don't live in NY, but I hear this same rational from people locally. The fact of the matter is, most of the taxes come from the city residents, so it's only natural that that most of the taxes should go to the city infrastructure. Rural taxpayers are not subsidizing urban dwellers. In fact, it's usually the other way around.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[azhrei_fje]

Hi, charleste. This is completely OT, but I figured I'd say "hi". I live in Tampa, but work elsewhere around the country/world (where I'm at is dependent on what week it is!). "Hi". :)

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[daun3507]

I think your father-in-law needs to take a closer look at the bill he recieves quarterly from the city of Buffalo for trash pickup. Buffalo does not provide it free of charge.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Peter Mork]

Hear, hear. About two years ago I was so sick of hearing how rural taxes were supporting decadent King County (Washington) that I obtained a county-by-county breakdown from the state of a) income and b) expenses. The only county to contribute more money to the state coffers than it received in benefits was King County (an urban county). The rural counties were all subsidized by we urbanites. Unlike the tax-whiners, though, I think this is fine. I'm happy to subsidize rural areas because I happen to be addicted to food.

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[plague3106]

Um, don't most people that live upstate live in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany?

Re:How could they make you pay it anyway?

[Wooo]

That's crap, who do you think pays the most taxes in the state? Oh that's right, NYC. Therefore shouldn't most of the money be spent there as well??

Heh

[SlashChick]

From the article: "The U.S. Office of Personnel Management encouraged federal agencies to more aggressively promote fuel-consuming options such as teleworking in a September memo."

Darn that Bush. I always knew he was conspiring with the oil companies! ;)

Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses? Or any of the other municipal/state costs that keep NYC such a great place to work, even virtually?

The same people pushing telecommuter tax exemption are even more insistent on corporate tax exemption. Of course, those same people want government out of the way of unrestrained corporate activity, regardless of its effects on humans - and nonprivileged corporations. It's corporate anarchy, and it looks a lot like the Dark Ages.

Re:Free Lunch

[PolyDwarf]

Err.. I'm having trouble.. Are you being sarcastic in your first paragraph?

Re:Free Lunch

[Kadin2048]

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses? Or any of the other municipal/state costs that keep NYC such a great place to work, even virtually?

I can't tell whether or not you're joking.

I'm sorry, but if I'm telecommuting into an "office" in NYC, I'm using zero services from the City of New York, that are not already being paid for by my employer there.

If I keel over at my desk onto my "virtual office," NYC isn't going to pay for the ambulance to come pick me up. When I flush the toilet, it's not NYC's sewage system that the waste is going to go into. The only reason I'm commuting to NYC at all is because there are (presumably) other people there that I want to communicate with -- after all, "telecommuting" is just a fancy word for communicate -- and those people pay taxes. So NYC is still getting their cut for the value they're providing.

This whole argument is ridiculous. What happens if a person in New York and a person in Des Moines have a discussion over a forum or Wiki, that's on a server in a colo in San Francisco. Should both people pay tax in SF? They're "working" there (they may not know it), aren't they? Oh wait, SF has already been paid -- by the company that runs the colo facility. Likewise, if I "telecommute" into NYC, whoever I'm commuting in to see is paying taxes.

New York City isn't doing anything to make itself a "great place to work virtually," they just happen to have a lot of people living there. Those people live there and pay taxes, but there's no reason why people not physically residing there should.

Your argument fails to make any sense.

In my mind, the problem here is why companies that have telecommuting employees insist on keeping them based, on paper, in NYC. If the guy works form his house in Jersey, put that down as his work location. If he works from the North Pole, put that down on his W-2. I've done remote-work jobs, and I've never used the location I'm calling-in to as my work location: I use whatever piece of ground I'm sitting on while I'm doing the work.

Computer do a lot of things, but they do not allow you to physically be in two places at the same time. All of this "tele-work" stuff just confuses the issue, which is inherently just a person sitting somewhere, in front of a computer and a telephone, talking to some other people, in a different place. There's no reason why this should be difficult to figure out.

Re:Free Lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

He does really sound that dumb.

Re:Free Lunch

[JustinKSU]

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses? Or any of the other municipal/state costs that keep NYC such a great place to work, even virtually?

How much does NYC pay of my telecom bill to access the network in New York? It's your Verizons or your Sprints that are paying for the infrastructure not New York City's government. Conversely how much is the company that is IN New York paying in taxes? You talk about the Dark Ages, does that include Government Greed? If I'm sitting in Kansas City (which I am), working for a company on Long Island (which I am), why the heck does NY deserve my money? The taxes I pay here will go to Kansas Schools (No evolution jokes allowed), but money I would pay to NY would be completely lost to me. I think it's only right to pass a bill of this nature.

Re:Free Lunch

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses?

Ever been mugged on your vpn?

Re:Free Lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he's being sarcastic and I agree with him.

Consider this, New York gives NewTech corporation tax incentives to base their business in New York. NewTech opens offices in Poughkeepsie and hires cut-rate workers in Mississippi. Under this legislation, New York loses out on tax revenue twice. So, you've got NewTech effectively outsourcing jobs to Mississippi. The business gets all of the benefit of being in New York and New York loses out on the tax revenue.

If an American is against outsourcing to India, then why shouldn't a New Yorker should be against outsourcing to Mississippi?

That's the way I see it. Though, I admit I don't know the specifics well enough to know if the outsourcing comparison holds up.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

No.

Here's a good test for sarcasm: take the communication at face value. Is a response ridiculous? If not, it's safe to assume you're not dealing with sarcasm.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

When the NYC company doesn't pay its telecommunting workers, the jursidiction is in NYC. Who pays for the justice system protecting that worker? Who pays for its ongoing activity that deters NYC companies from stiffing workers? Telecommuters who don't have any contact with each other, across the globe, are even more vulnerable to such attacks.

There's lots of other government expenses keeping the telecommuter's job available and worth keeping. You can cherrypick from the many expenses saved by telecommuting, like the obvious road maintenance (except for its role enabling the other services more directly consumed by telecommuters). But I asked about the services actually consumed by telecommuters. And I referred to the other end of the equation, already more advanced, where the resident corporations already pay too little taxes for the services they consume, and are even closer to paying even less. If you stop trying to rationalize a free ride at the expense of those of us who actually do pay our way, you'll have to admit they need to be paid. And that discarding them on telecommuters either underserves telecommuters, overcharges residents, and usually both.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

How can you quote the specific example of the NYC justice system protecting your job and your employer, then ignore it in your response? Sounds like you're overpaying for your Kansas schools. I don't think you need any other references to the Dark Ages beyond what we've already mentioned here.

Re:Free Lunch

[flooey]

In my mind, the problem here is why companies that have telecommuting employees insist on keeping them based, on paper, in NYC. If the guy works form his house in Jersey, put that down as his work location. If he works from the North Pole, put that down on his W-2. I've done remote-work jobs, and I've never used the location I'm calling-in to as my work location: I use whatever piece of ground I'm sitting on while I'm doing the work.

The problem is generally when people actually do work in the office from time to time. I work for a company in California during the summer, and when I'm at school in New York during the school year I sometimes telecommute in. It makes complete sense for the company to declare my office as being in California, but currently both California and New York can claim that I owe income tax in their state for the work I'm doing while telecommuting.

Re:Free Lunch

[fistfullast33l]

In my mind, the problem here is why companies that have telecommuting employees insist on keeping them based, on paper, in NYC. If the guy works form his house in Jersey, put that down as his work location. If he works from the North Pole, put that down on his W-2. I've done remote-work jobs, and I've never used the location I'm calling-in to as my work location: I use whatever piece of ground I'm sitting on while I'm doing the work.

Here's an interesting tidbit about New Jersey and New York income taxes. Last year, my fiance worked in New Jersey for 2 months, January and February. She then moved to Albany where she worked the remainder of the year for a different employer. She cut all ties to New Jersey once she moved, so none of her work was done there. Last month when she filed her income taxes, lo and behold New Jersey taxes people for their entire annual income, regardless of whether you earned it all in New Jersey or not. She basically had to pay income tax twice. New York, on the other hand, only taxed her for her New York income. Personally, I think that the New Jersey tax is worse than the New York telecommuter since she didn't feasibly benefit New Jersey's economy in any way after she moved. You could possibly make an argument that a telecommuter to a New York location does effect the economy there because you're conducting business there.

If you're a stock trader who lives in Jersey (a few do), and you telecommute to your desk in Manhattan to make a trade on the NYSE, isn't that affecting New York's (and some could argue the global) economy?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

When your NYC company's ISP gets DDoS'ed by an extortion racket, they call the NY Attorney General. Who pays for that?

Re:Free Lunch

[Just Some Guy]

Who pays for that?

The taxes from the NYC-based ISP.

Re:Free Lunch

[schon]

they call the NY Attorney General. Who pays for that?

Oh, I don't know, how about the company?

Re:Free Lunch

[ahodgson]

Since the NY AG would shrug and say "what can I do about that?", no one pays for it.

And in pretend-land, where law enforcement actually does something about computer crime, well, the ISP has employees in NY paying for it.

Re:Free Lunch

[jcr]

I'm sorry, but if I'm telecommuting into an "office" in NYC, I'm using zero services from the City of New York, that are not already being paid for by my employer there.

SInce when has taxation been about fairness?

This is just one of many excellent reasons for locating a business in Nevada, Washington, Texas, or any other state without an income tax.

-jcr

Re:Free Lunch

[killjoe]

NY has provided a whole slew of services to your business. Your business has chosen to be located in NY despite having the choice to move anyplace in the world. Therefore there must be something there that your business likes and since they seem to be thriving enough to hire you and let you work from a remote location they must be getting their money's worth.

In other words you might not have this job if your company wasn't located in NY.

Re:Free Lunch

[mrbooze]

So you're honest belief is that a person who lives in State A and works for a company in State B should actually pay double state taxes to both states? If they're a consultant who travels all over the country, do they have to pay full taxes in all 50 states?

As someone who lives in Chicago, telecommutes to support a development office in California, for a company headquartered in Texas, how many state's income taxes should I be paying?

(Actual answer: I pay Illinois income taxes.)

Re:Free Lunch

[necrognome]

Many of the NYC services you think you "pay for" are actually paid for by NYC residents (trust me, this is not a small tax to pay, especially if you are an "unincorporated business"). You are paying New York State tax. So the roads, schools, and various city services, etc. are paid for by us (i.e. city residents). I really don't want to rant here, and I'm not a follower of the "red state welfare" crap, but NYC sends more tax money to NYS and the Fed than it ever sees back. There are all sorts of good reasons for this, but don't whine to us about taxes. We already pay more than our fair share.

Re:Free Lunch

[Americano]

So should New York also be able to tax out-of-state residents for making phone calls to NYC residents?

I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm really trying to understand your point. But I don't see how telecommuting is "using NYC's resources" any more so than any other phone call... and the receiving lines are paid for New York companies, and taxed by New York... what service am I using that isn't being paid for by the people on the receiving end?

I'm desperately trying to understand your point, and you seem to be claiming that the government granting tax breaks will somehow lead us to some sort of anarchic dark age. And if that's the case, then why don't the residents of NYC simply demand that New York NOT give tax breaks to companies?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Poorly constructed example. When the telecommuter's NYC company gets a new bill from their ISP raising rates on their VPN, the company calls the Consumer Affairs department, the cops, the Attorney General, or some other government office, or their lawyer does.

Remember, corporations don't pay as much taxes as they consume in services already. Especially in cities like NYC which have cut taxes and made deals, supposedly to keep companies from leaving for places like New Jersey which don't charge taxes - or offer services.

Re:Free Lunch

[paulbd]

Sorry, but although I am sympathetic to your points about an overly pro-corporate environment, I think your perspective on this tax is skewed.

I telecommute from suburban Philadelphia to ... well, thats a good question. My employer has an office in NYC that is home to about 6 people, but it also has an office in LA and Nashville, as well as London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo. Even if I used my company's computing equipment (I don't), it would be hard to pin point exactly what is special about the NYC office other than its my nominal "designated office".

My home neighbourhood is the one that faces expenses from my presence here - theoretically I will drive to and from home more often given than I work at home, I will use more local services because I am at home etc.

But wait. If I commuted to work, I'd be driving those same roads every day whereas by telecommuting I drive them hardly ever. Moreoever, if I returned to my life as a stay-at-home parent, I'd be using local services even more (parks, libraries, stores and more), and paying nothing "extra" to do so. So who is winning and losing here? NYC incurs costs that are asymptotically zero from my designated office location being there. My home neighbourhood incurs costs that are either identical with or lower than the ones that would be involved in me not working at home. I pay state taxes anyway, and am glad to pay for the provision of state and local government services. I just can't see how my telecommuting has anything to do with my specific case. I live and work in Pennsylvania for a company with a world wide presence and an office in NYC. I pay taxes to Pennsylvania (gladly!) and that helps pay for the services I use, and would continue to use even if I were unemployed and paying no taxes.

What's the claim that NYC should collect taxes from me?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I already pointed out that the company underpays taxes already. And that the same people push for reduced taxes on both corporations and individuals (but mainly corporations and the individuals who own them).

How can you miss that?

Those people are also responsible for more than their proportional share of action by government, especially legal action.

Maybe you think there's such a thing as a free lunch, like the people trying to drown government in a bathtub.

Re:Free Lunch

[feijai]

Here's an interesting tidbit about New Jersey and New York income taxes. Last year, my fiance worked in New Jersey for 2 months, January and February. She then moved to Albany where she worked the remainder of the year for a different employer. She cut all ties to New Jersey once she moved, so none of her work was done there. Last month when she filed her income taxes, lo and behold New Jersey taxes people for their entire annual income, regardless of whether you earned it all in New Jersey or not. She basically had to pay income tax twice.

I doubt this. Like other states, New Jersey has a part-time resident and non-resident tax form which stipulates that your wife is responsible for paying taxes only on income she earned while in New Jersey (see page 7). If she lived in New York but continued working in New Jersey, then the income is split between New York and New Jersey. But that's not what you said.

Re:Free Lunch

[paulbd]

Until Elliot Spitzer showed up, its hard to argue that NY or NYC offered services above or beyond those present in Jersey City on the other side of the Hudson. Telecommuting isn't suitable for positions where people make things using industrial infrastructure as offered by major cities and ports. Telecommuters use networking facilities that were (unfortunately, from many perspectives) built and maintained by private corporations (admittedly under city-granted monopoly conditions). Its hard to argue that a telecommuter who works from her home on 5th Avenue in NYC is using any more or less city/state/federal services for her work than one who works across the water in Hoboken.

Re:Free Lunch

[wx327]

Here's an interesting tidbit about New Jersey and New York income taxes. Last year, my fiance worked in New Jersey for 2 months, January and February. She then moved to Albany where she worked the remainder of the year for a different employer. She cut all ties to New Jersey once she moved, so none of her work was done there. Last month when she filed her income taxes, lo and behold New Jersey taxes people for their entire annual income, regardless of whether you earned it all in New Jersey or not. She basically had to pay income tax twice. New York, on the other hand, only taxed her for her New York income. Personally, I think that the New Jersey tax is worse than the New York telecommuter since she didn't feasibly benefit New Jersey's economy in any way after she moved. You could possibly make an argument that a telecommuter to a New York location does effect the economy there because you're conducting business there.

Are you sure about that? I have helped a coworker who moved to/from NJ/NYC a couple years and had to deal with part-year resident forms on both sides. If you make 20K while living in NJ and 40K after moving to NY (and from a NY source), only 20K is taxable in NJ. Part-year resident tax forms for NJ are much less tedious than NYS/NYC PY resident tax forms (where you have to do a column for what's on your fed forms, another for what portion was NY state, etc).

From NJ 051040i.pdf p17

Filing Requirements. Any person who became a resident of this State or moved out of this State during the year is subject to New Jersey income tax for that portion of the income received while a resident of New Jersey. Part-year residents must file a resident return and prorate all exemptions, deductions, and credits, as well as the pension and other retirement income exclusions, to reflect the period covered by the return. A person who receives income from a New Jersey source while a nonresident must file a New Jersey nonresident return.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

In NYC, where we know all about reality, the inadequacies of telecom crime law enforcement come mainly from underfunding professional training and staffing. Though we do spend an awful lot of money on what they do cover.

Here in realitytown, we know that the extra demand on the ISP placed by its customers makes extra work for the legal services. And that the ISP is even more likely to have telecommuters.

Which part of pretend-land do you live in? The part where there's always someone else to pay the tab, so the bill never lands anywhere?

Re:Free Lunch

[Just Some Guy]

When the telecommuter's NYC company gets a new bill from their ISP raising rates on their VPN, the company calls the Consumer Affairs department, the cops, the Attorney General, or some other government office, or their lawyer does.

You mean to tell me that where you live, if you change the price you charge for your services then you can expect to hear from Consumer Affairs, the cops, the AG, and other government offices?

I think I've identified the disconnect between our logic: You've been living around lawyers and politicians far too long for your own good.

Re:Free Lunch

[PolyDwarf]

OK... given that you weren't being sarcastic, here's my non-ridiculous response...

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses? Or any of the other municipal/state costs that keep NYC such a great place to work, even virtually?

The same people pushing telecommuter tax exemption are even more insistent on corporate tax exemption. Of course, those same people want government out of the way of unrestrained corporate activity, regardless of its effects on humans - and nonprivileged corporations. It's corporate anarchy, and it looks a lot like the Dark Ages.

How is someone working in, say, Arizona taking advantage of legislating, policing, and judging? Isn't that what business/sales/property taxes (ie activites/items that physically take place in NY) are for? If you are, as another poster talked about, referring to various tax incentives that the city/state of NY gave to the businesses... Well, I gotta say, that's the city/state's fault for being that stupid, to give tax breaks/exemptions to businesses, without having teeth in them about worker status.

To take this to the logical (and in my mind, absurd) conclusion... A business has an office in NY. That business also has offices in each of the other 50 states. Say you work for that business, doing something that requires you to visit every state's office once per year. If everyone were like NY, you'd owe full income tax in every state. Some states, of course, do not have state income tax, so you're not looking at all 50 states.. But, let's say a good 35 of them, for the sake of argument, and they have an average rate of 4%.

Wow... I'd hate to have to pay 4% of my income to 35 states.. Heck, I'm not even quite sure how I'd manage it. This is ok, right? Because each state has police that they need to keep up, etc., all of which you are taking full advantage of, by way of being in that state, on business, for one day of the year. This is disregarding any other consideration that could be brought up (interstate commerce, anyone?).

I'm sure this argument won't make a dent, but hey...

Re:Free Lunch

[Americano]

And if the company is "underpaying" taxes -- illegally -- then by all means, the company should be taken to task by the state. If the company is "underpaying" taxes, as defined by "paying less in taxes than they consume in services," then the government of New York should man up and go ahead and raise taxes & revoke the tax breaks it's given to companies. If NYS / NYC is actually providing valuable services, the company will continue to locate there, and pay the taxes... if the perceived value of the services isn't worth it, then perhaps NYC will end up losing a lot of businesses. Either way, I fail to see how it's the *telecommuters* job to put to rights the disparity you see between production and consumption.

Re:Free Lunch

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Its hard to argue that a telecommuter who works from her home on 5th Avenue in NYC is using any more or less city/state/federal services for her work than one who works across the water in Hoboken.

It's pretty eaasy, actually - the telecommuter is using network resources, which are private, and server resources, which are in real estate taxed by the city. They aren't using the roads, trains, or utilities.

Re:Free Lunch

[Copid]

NY has provided a whole slew of services to your business. Your business has chosen to be located in NY despite having the choice to move anyplace in the world. Therefore there must be something there that your business likes and since they seem to be thriving enough to hire you and let you work from a remote location they must be getting their money's worth.

In other words you might not have this job if your company wasn't located in NY.

That's a good reason for the business that employs you to pay taxes (which they do). I might not have a job if one of my company's clients wasn't located in New York. A guy who works at a paper mill in Montana might not have a job if companies located in New York weren't doing so well that they need a lot of paper. At the end of the day, we all benefit from everbody else's prosperity in one way or another. Reasonably, I owe my living to the economies of several states even though I don't telecommute. That's no good reason for me to pay for all of their local programs.

If a program is so important and far reaching that it really and sincerely affects people outside the state, federalize it and I'll gladly pay my fair share. Until then, I'd rather not be paying for New York roads, Virginia schools, and upkeep on state courthouses in Illinois.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

What's the basis for the "so" with which you start off your question? I asked how the NYC services consumed by the telecommuter should be paid. The story summary, and framers of the telecommuter tax issue present an all-or-nothing false choice.

I don't think that the telecommuter should pay for all the redundant services delivered in multiple places. In fact, it's long been clear to me that the most appropriate tax is sales tax, with true necessities excluded - and labor included (instead of income tax).

In telecommuting, the labor takes place simultaneously in multiple locations, which split the tax on its wage price proportionately. If Chicago had a 10% sales tax and NYC had a 15% sales tax, and you charged your NYC employer $200, you'd owe Chicago 10% of $100 = $10 and NYC 15% of $100 = $15, so you'd probably tack $25 onto the $200 price.

It's a lot easier, cheaper and more likely to collect sales taxes from the fewer vendors than consumers, using the more frequent government controls on vendors for enforcement. Which means lower cost of collection and higher collections. All based on a system that costs people proportionate to their benefit from it, while reserving subsidy for necessities for the poor without the overhead of cycling the money through those less competent people.

If our $12T+ GDP paid 21% sales tax instead of income tax, we'd have the $2.5T Federal budget without debt - and a surplus. Include the other government income, and total Federal, state and local sales taxes would account for expenses, before any debt or even a 25% sales tax, not even considering the savings of such a simpler system. And it would make tax reporting much cheaper and easier, not to mention fairer and less invasive.

Re:Free Lunch

[Copid]

Many of the NYC services you think you "pay for" are actually paid for by NYC residents (trust me, this is not a small tax to pay, especially if you are an "unincorporated business"). You are paying New York State tax. So the roads, schools, and various city services, etc. are paid for by us (i.e. city residents). I really don't want to rant here, and I'm not a follower of the "red state welfare" crap, but NYC sends more tax money to NYS and the Fed than it ever sees back. There are all sorts of good reasons for this, but don't whine to us about taxes. We already pay more than our fair share.

Bear in mind that a huge percentage of the people you're talking to are in California. I think that we're pretty familiar with paying out far more than we receive in Federal taxes. As you said, there are good reasons for this (and a lot of not so good reasons), but I don't think that's a particularly rational reason for arbitrary inter-state transfers of income tax.

I have to wonder, though... what does NY state income tax pay for, and can you really justify the conclusion that people who telecommute to New York benefit from it an any material way (or, at least, any more than a wealthy out of state resident who makes most of his income buying and selling assets on the NYSE)?

Re:Free Lunch

[esper]

If "the company underpays taxes already", then the appropriate solution is to correct the company's tax rate, not to overtax anyone who happens to telecommute to the company.

Consider: If I telecommute to a NY company 10% of the time, then, even if your suggestion that I am using NY services is accepted at face value, I am only using them during 10% of my working hours. There is no justification for requiring me to pay NY taxes on the 90% of my working hours which are spent working with non-NY companies.

Consider further: While telecommuting to the NY company for that 10% of my working hours, I am using NY services at a far lower level than if I were a worker in NY - I'm not using the roads, fire department, police protection, etc. - and the services I am using are generally among the least expensive of the services provided by NY, therefore, telecommuting to NY for 10% of my hours costs NY far less than if I physically commuted there for those hours. It follows that, even on that 10% of my hours, I should be paying taxes at a far lower rate if I am telecommuting. Perhaps even at a rate so low that the cost of calculating and collecting the fair tax would be greater than the amount of that tax, in which case the tax should just be dropped to save money (both for me and for NY).

Unless, of course, you think NY should get a free lunch by charging out-of-state workers for services they're not in a position to make use of...

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

The telecommuting telecommunications isn't using NYC's resources much, though in fact NYC telecom taxes do pay for that - in a vastly complex, usually unfair system that doesn't pay its own way.

The NYC company consuming NYC services to employ the telecommuter has to be paid by taxes. And the NYC corporations don't pay enough to support that. I already specified just one kind of NYC service, legal/justice, consumed by telecommuters, but every respondent has ignored it.

NYC residents do demand NYC not give tax breaks to companies. But corporations have much more clout than humans, in NYC as elsewhere, so corporate demands trump human ones, in combination with other issues politicians use to cover the corporate welfare.

FWIW, one reason Giuliani was so hated by most New Yorkers by the end of his term as mayor was because he dropped the commuter tax on the physical commuters who depend on NYC services for their way of life. Not just the services keeping their office working. But also as a sink for poor people who can't afford the cost of living in the commuters' hometowns, who keep those hometown service demands low by living in NYC. Where it's also cheaper to service them, in our economy of scale.

Re:Free Lunch

[aaronl]

Excuse me? Around 50% of the taxes that a NY, but not NYC, resident pays to the State *GOES TO NYC*. You seem to have this equation a bit backwards.

Now, of course you don't see anything back from the Fed. Their current purpose is to consume as much as possible for as little work as possible. You pay much more than double your State taxes to the Feds. In that regard, of *course* you pay a lot more than you get; you pay most of that to the Fed.

Re:Free Lunch

[aaronl]

NYC uses the tax money that the employer pays in order to cover those services. The employee that is working in another state should pay that state the income. If you live in NY, and earn income in NJ, you pay NJ. Well, if I live in NJ, and telecommute to NY, I'm *working* in NJ, and pay NJ.

Put another way, when you drive from NJ to, say, Maryland... do you pay Delaware and Maryland taxes for the trip? You are gaining benefit from their roads, fire services, police, court systems, public works departments, etc. Of course you don't, because you don't earn income in those states, so they don't get to tax it. The gas stations, restaurants, hotels, etc, in those states pay taxes based on what you've paid to those businesses. That covers the government costs.

Re:Free Lunch

[RedHat Rocky]

"I asked how the NYC services consumed by the telecommuter should be paid."

Who said the services should be paid by the consumer specifically? I'd love that to be the case, because then I wouldn't have to pay for all the crap of which I don't take advantage or support all the free loaders.

The real state of affairs does not equate all whom consume pay for the services consumed, not by a long shot. So why pick on telecommuters?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I didn't say you should pay the same taxes to NYC as if you physically commuted. And I didn't say that your company's distributed offices made taxing it to pay the cost of servicing it easy. But there is of course an appropriate solution. Not necessarily analyzable or presentable in a couple of Slashdot posts by me, but there's nothing paradoxical about the situation - except when one consumes services when telecommuting without paying for them.

I've posted elsewhere about the superiority of a sales tax system. It also addresses your concerns. Sales tax you paid on your rent or purchase of your home would pay for local services, as well as sales tax on local purchases you consume. Sales tax you collected on your labor would be split between your physical location (home) and where the work was consumed. Your example calls for a complex split on the consumption side, but that's a cost of complexity like other costs incurred by the complex organization. Not paying for services that enable you to sell your work there prohibits offering them - an untenable setup that would default to NYC residents paying to subsidize your work.

Just because you can't see the services supporting the receiving end of your product, doesn't mean they don't exist, or don't get paid for. If corporations paid taxes proportionate to their cost, or benefit, maybe you and your corporation would pay only your respective taxes. But they don't, so you have to.

Just moving you out of the corporation's service area doesn't make those costs go away. But, as you point out, they can be lower. So that tax should be different. And the total costs should reduce, reducing the taxes.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

You're kidding about the equality of NYC government services to Jersey City government services, right? After all, your last sentence exactly supports the reasons for charging the Hoboken telecommuter taxes, just like the 5th Ave telecommuter. Except the part where the interstate commerce and telecom protection costs more in crossing the river.

Just for starters, Jersey City is mostly ghetto, NYC is only slightly ghetto. Jersey City public transit is subsidized more by NY than by NJ. The list is endless. And though Spitzer is doing a good job, he certainly didn't suddenly lift NY service delivery above that of Jersey City, which has been the pits for at least half a century, and never compared to NYC.

Re:Free Lunch

[techno-vampire]

We already pay more than our fair share.

I don't know if it's still true, but at one time, all the franchises had special menus for NYC with higher prices. Between rents, unions and taxes, the cost of doing business there were so high they couldn't do otherwise and make a profit. Not only that, but during and after the time I heard about that (from an accountant who had clients with multiple franchises) I was seeing documentaries about how parts of the NYC infrastructure were falling apart and nobody was doing anything about it. Things like bridge abutments crumbling from salt air, streets that hadn't been resurfaced in decades, shutoff valves in the water system that hadn't been tested in so long they were almost certainly frozen and so on. If I weren't such a cynic, I'd wonder how all that tax money was being spent.

Re:Free Lunch

[JustinKSU]

How can you quote the specific example of the NYC justice system protecting your job and your employer, then ignore it in your response?

I didn't. The justice system might protect my employer and my employer are already paying taxes for that. There is no need for me to pay additional taxes because I logon into a machine that falls in their police jurisdiction.

Re:Free Lunch

[cylcyl]

Where do you get this info? Yes, assuming half of the tax paid to NYS goes to NYC, this means that half of the NYS taxes paid by NYC residents goes non-NYC parts of NYS. With NYC being a larger tax base, NYC is on the short end of the stick

If 50% of all NYS taxes collected goes to NYC, NYC loses out because it accounts for >50% of the NYS tax collected

Re:Free Lunch

[necrognome]

I think you are wrong. Care to support your claims with some evidence?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

An Arizonan working for an NYC company makes that company bigger, requiring more legal infrastructure in NYC. Corporations don't pay enough taxes for governments to service them already, and raising those taxes would be harder than even taxing telecommuters. Unfortunately, many of the corporate tax breaks are produced by unaccountable politicians, like Giuliani after he was no longer eligible for reelection.

Distributed consumers of telecommuter labor make the tax/service problem more complex, naturally - just like they make everything more complex with their increased complexity. But corporations are incorporated in a single state, with offices in a single location. Telecommuter taxes are far from the first attempt to exploit corporate virtuality to evade taxes or other liabilities. Taxing telecommuters is just another example.

FWIW, I never said telecommuters would pay the full income tax, or the same taxes, as local workers. Taxing telecommuters appropriately doesn't mean picking either full or no taxes. Appropriately taxed to their service costs, telecommuters offer many benefits to their remote locations. Including flexibility in face of disasters and regional economics, as well as offering a much larger pool of labor in which telecommuters compete for work. As well as road/bridge/tunnel/transit maintenance and capacity, which are usually net losses.

FWIW, I'm continuing the debate regardless of whether you learn anything from it. I'm taking your side seriously, to ensure that my vision accommodates both the economic realities and popular (if even weak) criticisms and concerns. You're the one who's suggested the debate isn't serious in every one of your posts, which certainly doesn't encourage any hope that you wwill learn anything from it.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Yes you did. And now you're ignoring another fact I mentioned, that corporations don't pay enough taxes for their required services already - where they consume more than just the electricity for their remote access machine.

You've burned two chances to say something serious. Why should I continue to reply?

Re:Free Lunch

[pete6677]

What would law enforcement do if you called them regarding someone carrying out a cyberattack on you? I think we all know the answer. Get back to me when the government does something for telecommuters worth paying for.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Look, I'm talking about the obvious case where raising prices violates the law, as I mentioned necessitating legal/justice service. Like raising them despite contractual obligation, or beyond monopoly tariffs. I think you're projecting your lawyer fixation on me, and I'm not going to bother grinding out posts to meet your parsing requirements.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

"If the company is "underpaying" taxes, as defined by "paying less in taxes than they consume in services," then the government of New York should man up and go ahead and raise taxes & revoke the tax breaks it's given to companies."

Corporations also evade taxes, but mostly they do it legally. Transforming our political system is even less likely than fixing our tax system. Until we replace either or both, like with the sales tax system I favor, we have to patch it. Patching it merely to drop telecommuters from paying for services they continue to consume, like the protections of their paychecks from deadbeat employers, just kills the protector.

Every reply post disagreeing with my post has ignored the actual reality of taxes, service cost and politics. It's like people think our society is some kind of ideal libertarian machine that just has a little bit of inefficient sand in its gears, that cleared away will just return fairness to humans. Maybe more people need to actually work physically in New York City, where reality is unavoidable.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Yeah, get corporations to give up their welfare. No chance. There is a chance to keep telecommuters paying for service demands they generate, by stopping or fixing the bills we're discussing.

As I've posted again and again in this thread, I'm not saying telecommuters have to pay the same amount of taxes as local workers - just not zero.

If you want to talk about NY getting a free lunch, I suggest you look at how much we pay to subsidize the rest of the country, especially places that offer less services. Which welfare state do you live in?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Corporations don't pay their fair share, and won't be giving up the welfare their power grabs them anytime soon. We're talking about a new law that would also hand free services to telecommuters, too. And that's unacceptable, because it's economically impossible.

How about someone actually answers my question in this thread, rather than the dozens of misdirections I've charitably warded off? You've come closest, so I'll requery you.

How should those services telecommuters consume be paid?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

As I keep repeating in this thread, corporations don't pay taxes sufficient to cover their costs.

Delaware and Maryland don't charge tolls on those roads, because their budget model doesn't require it due to alternatives. But NJ does charge tolls on its roads.

The income tax is a terrible way to tax people. I prefer a sales tax, which is simpler, easier to control, and based on the benefit people derive from the system whose bills we're paying.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Guess again. Not only does NYC spend a lot of money defending itself from "cybercrime", but its defense protects lots more than just our own companies, residents and tele/commuters. As usual, we're working hard to keep the whole country working.

Re:Free Lunch

[merreborn]

"except when one consumes services when telecommuting without paying for them."

Which services are these? GP mentions many services that certainly _aren't_ consumed, and yet it seems you haven't come up with a single specific example of services that _are_ consumed.

Re:Free Lunch

[Pollardito]

can we at least all agree that the total tax liability of a telecommuter should not be double that of someone that works in an office? the total tax bill should be about the same as someone that isn't telecommuting. when you see it from that perspective and start to think about what proportion of that total would go to where they live and what proportion should go to where they work, the vanishingly small amount of services provided by the city that they're telecommuting into make the act of even paying that portion of their taxes in a separate filing a huge waste. if 99.9% of the services i receive are from my home city and .1% are from my work city, the overhead of actually paying/collecting/tracking/enforcing that .1% probably approaches the actual amount they're collecting.

Re:Free Lunch

[hurfy]

That sounds like an reason to live there not have a business there. Having no income tax has little to do with having a good business climate.

If i had a choice(not my company..yet) i would move the comapny next door to idaho despite the tax. The business tax forms rock ;) Idaho sales tax form is 1/3 page....the Washington form is 4 pages...which one do you want to pay someone to fillout each month?? Not to mention WA snipes .5% off the top that you can't pass on directly for B&O tax .

How about a litter tax for the state of WA.....that doesn't apply to McDonalds!?! WTF, none of the litter here comes from fast food joints ?!? They slipped that exemption thru a few years ago, never heard of it til i looked something up after they demanded we pay it. (we sell Ensure = food exemption for sales tax = groceries = litter tax applied to half our sales (or manually calculate correctly which would cost more than paying it)

but hey we have no income tax, but still collect more taxes than most states with em :( Wouldn't be so bad if there weren't exemptions for most big businesses,etc.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I kicked off this whole annoying thread by asking "How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses?

The real conspicuous absence in the thread is any way to pay for them, or even any recognition that they exist - even while quoting my mention of one example.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I agree that telecommuters shouldn't pay the full tax in both their physical and their virtual location.

But the total tax bill should depend on what their jurisdictions spend on them. That might not mean the telecommuter bill is the same as the local worker.

Re:Free Lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ, you sure do have a lot of time on your hands. Do you work for the NY Dept. of Revenue or something? That would explain the dozens of posts defending this insane double taxation.

Re:Free Lunch

[rahrens]

You're talking about a VAT. its the only way to tax things like you are suggesting.

Re:Free Lunch

[paulbd]

You're completely missing the point. I know the state of Jersey City. I park there most times I drive up to NYC from Philadelphia. What matters is not the absolute level of services offered by a given location, but the services that are utilized by a telecommuter working in a given location that differ from those in any other. I wouldn't choose to live in Jersey City, but if I choose to live in Manhattan, I will pay much more in city taxes to cover the massively increased city amenities I have available. However, if I work in Jersey City (regardless of where I live) the services I use in order to perform my job are essentially indistinguishable from the ones I would use in Manhattan (or any of the 5 boroughs).

Choice of where to live is important, and property and other local taxes will hopefully reflect (to some extent) the (service-centered) benefits of one location over another. But choice of where to work is orthogonal to this - as a telecommuter I need a space, a functional broadband connection and a way to get between that space and my home if they are not one and the same. You cannot be claiming that by writing software in NYC I am using more city services than doing the same job in Jersey City? Clearly, *living* in NYC I would do so, but as I've now said twice, other non-income based taxes reflect that particular reality.

Re:Free Lunch

[fishbowl]

>Since when has taxation been about fairness?

Taxation is a search for an equilibrium solution just barely under the threshold where the people subject to the tax would rather risk their lives by violently opposing it than paying it.

(Remember, the Boston Tea Party perps would have been summarily hanged for what they did, and let's not kid ourselves about the penalties for armed assault against members of the British Army and Navy.)

So, with that in mind, do you consider this level of taxation tolerable, or do you find it intolerable? Tolerable means you are willing to live another day under the status quo. Intolerable means you would prefer, if it comes to it, to die in an effort to ensure that your progeny will enjoy a better life.

Re:Free Lunch

[batkiwi]

The answer you're looking for, which has been given to you many times in this thread, is "What costs?"

Telecommuting to NYC offers you no protections nor services. Where would I go for unemployment if I get sacked after telecommuting to NYC? Whose ambulence will pick me up if I have a heart attack while on the job? What services of NYC am I consuming?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Anonymous clueless Coward, I'm a rich guy who knows how taxes and finance work. And the English language. So here's another hint: I've never defended double taxation, and even repudiated the implication in several of the posts.

Get a clue, then try posting even once.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

No, the quality of legal and justice services is much better in NYC than in Jersey City. NYC has better value for money spent, due to our economies of scale and the better people we attract to manage it, but we spend more producing much more and better services. Which is one reason why people want to telecommute here: those investments in making this a better place to do business pay off in more money to spend on labor, including telecommuters.

No matter how you spin it, there's no way to say that Jersey City's services are equal to NYC's. Their quality is much lower, and our cost is higher. Someone's got to pay it. The corporations won't, the residents shouldn't pay extra for telecommuters. It's simple: telecommuters should pay for services they consume.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

You've just added some more of the costs that don't apply. But no one has refuted the costs the city has in protecting telecommuters' ability to get paid for their work.

Nor said how to pay for it without taxing telecommuters. Some have said the NYC employer should pay, but they already don't, and the bills we're discussing don't do anything about that.

So as many times as "what costs?" gets asked in this thread, the answer is still the same. Why can't people even read the first sentence of the first post, repeated several times in the thread, when trying to argue with it?

Re:Free Lunch

[aaronl]

Your linked article is an organization that is specifically trying to skew numbers in favor of NYC getting additional state money.

NYS has a population of 18.98 million people, while NYC has a population of 8.10 million. For property tax, $21.67 billion comes from outside NYC out of a total of $31.50 billion, for example. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find an authoritative source to support either your or my own statements about income tax. I wasn't even able to find a decent salary distribution for NYC vs. the rest of the state.

By the population numbers, NYC *should* be getting less than 50% of the resident income tax back in state aid. Please let me know if you find anything that definitely shows either way.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

A Value Added Tax is a kind of sales tax. There are other ways to charge sales tax, but a VAT is OK, when the different kinds of transactions aren't just a way to game the system.

Re:Free Lunch

[paulbd]

but the telecommuters do not consume the type of services you're describing, mostly because US labor law sucks so badly when viewed from an employee perspective that its barely worth it. i just don't see much evidence for this claim you are making that telecommuters draw on services from the community in which their remote office is located. any services.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

What do you think keeps telecommuter paychecks coming, corporate honor? Telecommuters are even less naturally protected from exploitation than in-person workers, and the local labor pool. Locals can hear through the grapevine or media not to trust a local employer. Telecommuters are even more isolated and easily replaced from the larger labor pool. It's the local justice department that keeps the employers "honest".

Re:Free Lunch

[bigpat]

How should NYC pay for the costs of legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers while they're telecommunting to NYC businesses? Or any of the other municipal/state costs that keep NYC such a great place to work, even virtually?

You do realize that "telecommuting" isn't really commuting? It is just some trendy term for working from your home. The idea that you should be taxed by another state for working out of your own home is pretty rediculous. Very rediculous. Absurd... beyond absurd. So.... it must be the result of government thinking: How can we suck today?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

You apparently don't realize that telecommuting is different from traditionally working from home. Because you're simultaneously working at your employer's location.

You also don't know how to spell "ridiculous". Or what "absurd" means. Or how to back up such obnoxious claims beyond just asserting them. Or how to justify the leap from muttering "absurd" to deducing "government thinking".

So there's no sense explaining once again in this tiresome post how telecommuters consume services where they're working virtually. You'll just screw it up beyond recognition.

Re:Free Lunch

[batkiwi]

"But no one has refuted the costs the city has in protecting telecommuters' ability to get paid for their work"

How does the city protect the commuters' ability to get paid for their work?

Re:Free Lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

A rich and smart guy who spends at least 6 continuous hours trolling Slashdot?

Re:Free Lunch

[killjoe]

Well you are a typical american, of course you would rather not pay taxes to benefit the state that nurtures your company. You probably would rather not pay any taxes anywhere.

Still though you directly benefit, not just one intangable way fifteen steps down the road.

Re:Free Lunch

[RedHat Rocky]

I refuse to fall in to the trap your question frames.

Fact: Consumers of specific services don't necessarily pay in any form for those specific services.
Example: Out of state travelers using state highways. They don't pay for those highways in any form.

I do not support the assumption that services used by telecommuters SHOULD be paid for by those telecommuters.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I just gave an example of a single class of services. There are more services apart from my example. The services in my example form a network of varied services. And within that network, as well as the other more or less directly consumed services, there's an entire government infrastructure that the telecommuters use.

Some states charge tolls on highways. Others subsidize the highways with other fees generated by the out of state travellers, including Federal subsidy.

The fact is that those services generate costs. How to pay them? You're refusing to pay for services that must be paid. And you're not alone. The country has a $10TRILLION debt from that kind of refusal.

Re:Free Lunch

[RedHat Rocky]

Whoops, unreality shields have been engaged.

You've moved way beyond your initial argument, but I'll give my personal opinion:
Taxes. The federal tax system is a huge, stupid, overly complicated mess. Ditch the whole thing and implement flat tax.
Ditch breaks for corps.

Overly simple? Probably, but that's the best ONE person can suggest with the current state of the mess.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Disengage your unreality shields.

The reality is that I just quoted my original post, as I have had to do several times in this post, where no one has explained how to pay for the legal/justice services consumed by adding telecommuters to the operations of a growing company. The reality is that out of state highway users do consume services that are paid for, despite your claims to the contrary. And the reality is that passing the bills we're discussing in these threads does not replace the lost revenue with federal taxes for the services still consumed. Nor will they.

The reality is that you are unable to answer the simple question, so you distract with bad examples, then try to claim some kind of victory when I negate your distraction, as cover for proposing an unrealistic alternative - which I've already said in these threads that I'd prefer, but which is not going to happen any time soon.

You better reengage your unreality shields - you're not handling reality too well.

Re:Free Lunch

[Peter Mork]

Sorry guys, but you're probably not going to find your answer online. You will probably need to contact the state comptroller's office and request a county-by-county breakdown (which you should be able to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act). Then, you're going to have to run your own numbers. However, once you're done, you will find out that New York City generates more than it consumes. I say this with confidence because every study that compares urban areas to rural areas ends up with the same conclusion. This includes my own study of Seattle compared to the rest of Washington.

Re:Free Lunch

[RedHat Rocky]

Again, I refuse to allow you to assert that specific services should be paid for by the specific consumer. Hence, your question has no merit and is not worth answering.

Re:Free Lunch

[bigpat]

You apparently don't realize that telecommuting is different from traditionally working from home. Because you're simultaneously working at your employer's location.

Yes, I don't realize it, because it isn't true. How can you be in two places at once? We are still physical beings. The actual work is done by the person even if that work is conveyed to the employer via the internet, it should be considered no differently than if the person Fedexed the product of the work to the employer. The Internet is just more efficient for conveying information, but it in no way changes the reality of arrangement.

So, would you also assert that help desk employees should also be taxed in the state which confused customers are calling from? After all under your brilliant reasoning, they would be performing work in two different places at once.

You'll just screw it up beyond recognition.

Well, I suppose I was being fairly derisive when I told you you were exercising some government thinking and I am sorry to have offended. But absurd is the correct description of a belief that you can do work in two places at once. "Ridiculous" is just about right too.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

Here's something to bounce off your unreality fields, so clearly battened down:

I asked how to pay for those services, which have costs. I didn't say the specific consumer should pay for specific costs. I just asked how to pay for them. My question has its simple merit. Your unreality answers have no merit, and I'm glad I won't have to respond to them anymore.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

Your single fringe case example doesn't prove anything. First off, how often does that really happen that justifies a telecommuter paying for police in NYC? Second, you file a case in NYC, and you'll more than likely have to pay court fees (or perhaps the company will when it loses).

The fact is that there are no services which aren't already being paid for by the telecommuters employer, so there's no reason for the telecommuter to pay taxes to NYC.

Please let us know what day to day expenses are incurred by NYC which aren't being paid for.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

Who said the services should be paid by the consumer specifically? I'd love that to be the case, because then I wouldn't have to pay for all the crap of which I don't take advantage or support all the free loaders.

Because its fair. Also, I support the notion of cutting off all the freeloaders. Health care is not a right, nor is it anyones right to force everyone else to pay for that person or thier children.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

We're talking about a new law that would also hand free services to telecommuters, too.

What services are being provided for free by NYC to a resident whom telecommutes from NJ?

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

Example: Out of state travelers using state highways. They don't pay for those highways in any form.

They also pay state sales tax on items bought, as well as gasoline tax. No, its not as much as a resident would pay, but they use taht highway a lot less than residents.

Care to try again?

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

Why? You think its right for some to freeload off of others? How is that fair exactly?

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

NYC spends lots of money in ongoing operations that deter employers from abusing employees. Those costs spike when the system fails to prevent the exploitation, but they're spent daily.

Please let us know when employers take care of employees out of the goodness of their hearts.

Re:Free Lunch

[Doc Ruby]

I've answered that question a dozen times in this thread, starting with my original post. Try reading the posts, or paying me to do it for you.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

NYC spends lots of money in ongoing operations that deter employers from abusing employees.

Really? Please name some of these ongoing operations; don't forget to detail exactly what these abuses are they the operations are preventing. I suspect that you're full of it.

Those costs spike when the system fails to prevent the exploitation, but they're spent daily.

The only 'explotation' would be a company not paying the telecommuter. And as stated before, the city would recoup any costs via court and lawyer fees paid by one or both parties.

Please let us know when employers take care of employees out of the goodness of their hearts.

How exactly should an employer 'take care' of its telecommuters? They are paid and get benefits, what more do you want? Its not like they can possibly be working in an unsafe environment.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

I've gone up the parent trail to your original post. And the only 'service' you describe is 'what if the company doesn't pay its workers.' And I answered that. The juristiction will be NYC, and the COURT fees will be paid by one or both parties.

Outside of that 'company wont pay its workers' scenario you describe, you've offered NOTHING else that NYC provides to telecommuters.

Oh, you also point out that companies don't pay their fair share of taxes. That's a seperate issue, and not a good reason to double tax telecommuters.

So if you present another service (other than a vague reference that somehow NYC is protecting telecommuters from 'abuses') I'd respond it. Hell, just give me a link to a post where you point out something other than the issues I've already addressed.

If you can't provide anything except 'NYC keeps companies from abusing employees' without specfifying the specific abuses which I've already talked about, then you pretty much don't have any case whatsoever.

Re:Free Lunch

[esper]

Since you asked... I live in Minnesota, which that site's data lists as receiving $0.10 less than New York per dollar paid in federal taxes. I'm sure that, in raw dollar amounts, NY is probably doing more to subsidize the rest of the country than MN, but we're paying more out proportionally.

Back on topic, you are right that the odds of a completely fair and just tax system coming out are about the same as pigs landing on the moon (without human assistance), but that still doesn't make overtaxing Peter to undertax Paul right. I must've missed the subthreads where you've said that you think telecommuters should pay less than those who are physically present, so my apologies for not realizing you'd already said it, but I do still believe that the accounting costs of trying to do a fair appraisal of telecommuting work in the general case would be unreasonably high and, to be fair, would have to be applied to all workers, telecommuting or not. e.g., I go in to work at the Minneapolis office, access an intranet server in New York, pull up a remote desktop off a server in Dallas, and then send mail through a company server in San Francisco. If there are telecommuting income taxes, then shouldn't they at least apply to that remote desktop connection in Texas, if not for all three states I touched? If not, why not? I'm making the exact same use of NY, TX, and CA resources by connecting to them from the MN office as if I were doing so from my home, 5 miles away. But if they are assessed, then we have an accounting nightmare, especially when some legislator in Iowa realizes that I'm using a router in Iowa to reach that server in Texas...

Re:Free Lunch

[Copid]

Well you are a typical american, of course you would rather not pay taxes to benefit the state that nurtures your company. You probably would rather not pay any taxes anywhere.

Still though you directly benefit, not just one intangable way fifteen steps down the road.

Actually, I have no problem paying taxes, and I generally have a more left of center view on the topic than most Americans. I just happen to think that this particular idea is idiotic. Here's why:

1) Of course I benefit from New York's public services. I also benefit from Florida's public services. I also benefit from the French medical system. Given that we live in a very global economy, my company benefits fairly directly from the public service programs in most states and many foreign countries. I think it's great that those services exist, and I think that the world is a better place for it. That's not the question, though. The question is, should I be paying income tax on all of my income in every country in the EU, half of East Asia, and 35 out of 50 states in the US to cover services that only peripherally benefit me, or is there a more logical way of doing it, like taxing the businesses that make use of my services there?

2) Why on earth are telecommuters who earn their money in NY taxed as NY residents when wealthy out of state investors who make most of their money trading on the NYSE or NYMEX aren't? What about people who work for mail order companies that send most of their goods to New York? Should they pay full income tax in both states? Computers are wonderful things, but they can't allow you to be in two places at once, and there's no reason to write weird laws that pertain specifically to them and gouge telecommuters and not others whose income is earned in similar patterns.

This is not a question of not wanting to pay taxes at all, or even not being willing to pay taxes that don't directly benefit me for the good of a healthy society from which I benefit. It's a practial matter of sensible policy that extracts reasonable contributions from everybody in a particular constituency. We all clearly can't afford to pay income tax on 100% of our income in all 50 states, even though we benefit as a whole from the healthy governance of all of them. You seem to think that my proposal is an "every man for himself" solution of abolishing those government services. In reality, I'm just proposing that state residents pay for services that directly affect them and that any extra burden caused by the cost of interstate commerce should be borne by the businesses who take part in that commerce. Sure, the businesses would pass their costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices and employees in the form of lower wages, but that pattern would more reasonably reflect who is actually causing the public to incur the extra costs, and I doubt it's going to ruin anybody.

New York's current system is just a cynical attempt to extract some free tax money from a class of people who can't vote in local elections and thus have no recourse. It's a great way of raising taxes while still staying popular with your local constituency ("We'll just get those other guys to pay for it!"), but it's not espeically fair, and I would argue that it produces a larger deadweight loss in the nationwide economy than a more equitable structure that maintains the same services.

Re:Free Lunch

[RedHat Rocky]

Who said life was fair?

Fact: People free load off others.

Arguing the rightness of that serves no purpose. Talking about changing the state of things, that has purpose.

All done here.

Re:Free Lunch

[killjoe]

The world is not black and white. I benefit from hick in montana milking cows and some rancher in Argentina rasing a herd of delivious cows but it's not REASONABLE for me to pay tazxes in those places. But it's REASONABLE that I pay taxes when I telecommute to another state.

Re:Free Lunch

[Copid]

The world is not black and white. I benefit from hick in montana milking cows and some rancher in Argentina rasing a herd of delivious cows but it's not REASONABLE for me to pay tazxes in those places. But it's REASONABLE that I pay taxes when I telecommute to another state.

If you say so. I'm glad you're here to tell us what's reasonable. I happen to think that paying income tax on whatever part of my income I earned telecommuting is fine as long as I only pay it in one place is reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable for me to pay taxes on all of my income in two different states as if I owe all of my income equally to both of them as described in the commentor's summary (right or wrong... you never know with /.). Fortunately, you were here to correct me without any real explantion.

I'm forced to wonder, though, why just telecommuters? Why not financial instrument traders? Why don't people living near the border of two states pay full income tax in both of them? I think it might have something to do with drawing reasonable lines and the inablity to make a fair estimate of what they should be paying. Why that doesn't apply to telecommuters is anybody's guess.

Re:Free Lunch

[killjoe]

"I'm forced to wonder, though, why just telecommuters? Why not financial instrument traders? Why don't people living near the border of two states pay full income tax in both of them?"

Again it all has to do with reasonableness.

Re:Free Lunch

[plague3106]

Who said life was fair?

I dunno, we all seem to have some embedded sense of what is fair and what is not.

Fact: People free load off others.

That doesn't make it right. Let me try one.

Fact: People kill other people.

Well, I guess that settles it. We shouldn't bother with murders anymore. I guess its just unfair.

Arguing the rightness of that serves no purpose. Talking about changing the state of things, that has purpose.

Um, arguing that something is wrong usually has to be the first step into changing things, don't you think?

All done here.

Good. What a useless post that was..

Much larger problem

[chadliness]

People being double charged for state taxes is a larger problem then just telecommuters. Many people who live close to a state line and work in another state end up double paying. Sometimes there are forms which can be used to avoid this but they are not widely publicised.

Re:Much larger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Most states give a credit on the home state tax for taxes paid to another state. I think only Connecticut and Illinois don't.

Most of the time, you don't actually end up paying double taxes; you just get taxed at the higher of the two rates.

Re:Much larger problem

[truthsearch]

I used to live in CT and work in NY. In this case I can tell you I definitely was not double paying. NY transfered most of the tax witheld to pay for my CT tax. And I was required to file both NY and CT returns, so it certainly wasn't hidden.

Re:Much larger problem

[gorbachev]

I would be surprised to find any instance of double taxes anywhere. I think the summary is just plain wrong.

You get a tax credit from your home state for taxes paid in the state you work in. Or the other way around.

If it didn't work that way, there would've been a revolt long, long time ago already.

Re:Much larger problem

[Professor_UNIX]

You get a tax credit from your home state for taxes paid in the state you work in. Or the other way around.

Too bad it doesn't work that way with cities. I pay 2% tax to the city I work in and 0.75% tax to the city I live in (they give me a 0.25% credit since I don't work in the city). I don't have any problems paying income tax to the city I live in, but it's criminal that I should have to pay taxes to the city I work in but have no voting rights in. It's taxation without representation. If they want to recover costs they should do it by taxing the business which resides in their city not my personal income from work.

Re:Much larger problem

[ltbarcly]

TFB

If you are dumb enough to pay double taxes when you don't have to then I appriciate your "generosity through stupidity" TM.

Re:Much larger problem

[Peter Mork]

Double taxation disappears only when there's an explicit reciprocity agreement, or the state decides not to collect taxes on income taxed by another state. Virginia, if I understand correctly, has just such a clause. I live in Maryland, and pay income tax in Maryland, even though I work in Virginia. However, that's only because Virginia decided that this arrangement is okay.

Call me cynical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, a piece of legislation that could improve the lives of citizens? I wonder what sort of soul-sucking privacy-invading large-state-entitlement riders will be attached to the final bill.

Re:Call me cynical...

[DigiShaman]

These days, that's not being cynical. That's being "wise" to as such questions.

Wow, it's about time.

[KiltedKnight]

This legislation could easily provide the kind of tax relief middle income families keep looking for so they can really put a little more away for retirement, kids' education, etc. Telecommuting already allows them to save money by not having to drive or ride public transportation all the time while leveraging something they're already paying for... a high speed internet connection.

NY has always been a problem with taxing non-residents... whether they telecommute or not.

I used to work in NYC while living in NJ. Even with going in to the office on a daily basis, NY wanted me to report all income (interest, dividends, side job not in NY, etc), then calculate the tax on that, using the non-resident scale, then multiply it by the percentage of my total income earned in NY. Net result is that I had to pay more in taxes instead of paying based solely on money earned in NY.

No help for NJ residents

[Red Flayer]

I live in NJ, work in NY. NJ only taxes me on income not subject to tax in NY -- not income not earned in NY. Not sure about how other states deal with state taxes paid to another state.

Sucks anyway for me, since NY state tax is approximately 2.5-3 times the NJ tax, and I derive very little benefit from the NY taxes I pay. But, for telecommuters who sometimes have to work in NY -- nice deal. Makes me want to telecommute and pay the NJ tax rate when I'm working from home.

A scenario though -- if an employer has a telecommuting employee in another state, do they need to pay employment taxes in that state? My company has satellite offices in other states, and legally it's a bit of a pain. Would a company have to file also as a NJ employer if their telecommuting employees were treated as working in NJ while telecommuting?

Re:No help for NJ residents

[Surt]

Fairness wise, it ought to be the case that tax is due to the state in which the employee was physically located when the work was done, as presumably that is the state from which public resources were consumed. Of course, I'm doubtful that we'll ever reach such a situation, but this law might help.

Re:No help for NJ residents

[Red Flayer]

In my case, some NY state resources would be consumed by me even if I telecommuted -- from what I understand I'm covered by NYS unemployment, not NJ, should I get shitcanned. Also, things like employment audits and other Buraeu of Labor stuff. I'm also covered by NY employment law, which is a little more restrictive to employers than NJ law (not that it matters one bit in practice).

Of course, NJ and my municipality make a metric buttload of cash off me from sales tax and real estate tax, respectively -- not to mention the taxes on my additional NJ income.

But in terms of fairness, there is public expenditure both by the state where the employee does the work, and the state where the employer is. Just not sure what the breakdowns would be.

Re: No help for NJ residents

[i am kman]

1) Employees at the satellite offices don't pay NY taxes. Why don't you use these offices as your base and telecommute to these?

2) The business would probably have to establish a place of business in NJ (which probably couldn't be your house). Or, if your company really liked you, you could establish an LLC in NJ and consult. You'd save ALOT more than just state taxes that way.

Re: No help for NJ residents

[Red Flayer]

As to 1), I can't. I regularly need to work from NYC, so an employment audit would fry my employer -- and they get audited regularly.

As to 2), LLC not gonna happen -- I've tried :)

And as to setting up a NJ Franchise, that's the legal PITA I was referring to. We already do it for CA, CT, and MA. CA is the worst, we pay CA Franchise Tax up the wazoo for only two employees -- let alone what they pay in income tax.

Re:No help for NJ residents

[truthsearch]

I derive very little benefit from the NY taxes I pay

You work in NY. So you're using NY services when in NY. If you get hurt you'll probably go to a NY hospital by the fire department or city ambulance. You probably take public transportation to get to work, which is partly subsidized by the city. Or you drive on NY roads. You're protected by NY police. Taxes may be high, but you do get significant benefits from them.

Re: No help for NJ residents

[bloosqr]

But you dont pay the city tax... the kids who live in the city use far less resources than you commutors i.e. public transportation and are not only hit w/ a higher cost of living but also hit w/ the city tax.. its like bloomberg wants people to leave the city..

Re:No help for NJ residents

[Anonymous Coward]

This may not be relevant so disregard if it is. Kansas City is spread across both Kansas and Missouri. If I remember correctly, here is the tax setup. Both Missouri and Kansas tax the work done in their state. Both also tax the income of those living in their state. Unlike Kansas, Missouri gives a tax break on all income earned in Kansas. The general outcome is that for all non spent income Kansas commuters pay twice, Missouri commuters pay only once (to Kansas). This is a generalization and the actual laws are probably a little more complex but it gets the idea across. For several years I worked in this situation. Every year I received a refund from Kansas and owed Missouri. How much? Approximately five dollars. Not bad for a yearly tax.

Re:No help for NJ residents

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay taxes in two states, do you get to vote in both states? Or is it taxation without representation?

Re: No help for NJ residents

[Red Flayer]

People who live in the city use far more resources than those of us who don't. I don't see how you can think otherwise -- I don't need residential fire or police coverage in NYC, I don't drive in the city, I don't make use of ANY city resources at all, except for the sidewalks and the fire/police coverage at my worksite. I pay out the wazoo for my commute (close to $400/mo)-- and almost $4 of my daily commute goes to PANYNJ (who pays the city a portion of that), not to the company that runs my bus line. To suggest that city residents use public transportation less than Jersey folks -- well, that's quite mistaken. Most people out of state, if they use the subway, use it twice a day, weekdays only. So, if the subway is indeed subsidized by taxes (not sure if it is), NYC residents tend to use it more than out-of-staters -- more often in the evenings, more often on the weekends. I also pay sales tax on my purchases in NY, which more than covers the resources spent on me.

Don't forget that NYC gets quite a bit of cash from NY State (some of which is coming from me), as well as a ton of money from commercial rent tax that employers (like mine) pay.

Bloomberg doesn't want people to leave the city... he just understands that a city like NY can't operate on a deficit for very long, like when the federal government had to step in several decades ago. The city faces rising expenses just like you and I, and since the economy is still slowish in NY, it takes tax hikes and service cuts to make the budget.

state tax reciprocity

[hal9000(jr)]

This often results in a double tax when the telecommuter's home state expects tax on the income the telecommuter earns at home.

I am pretty sure that Connecticut is the only state that doesn't have reciprocity for state taxes. IOW, in most states, you can deduct state taxes paid to another state so you don't get double whacked. This is useful for people who live on state borders. Of course, you accountant makes out better.check with your accountant.

The people who really get screwed are those that don't pay any state tax.

Re:state tax reciprocity

[Anonymous Coward]

My accountant makes out better than whom?

Re:state tax reciprocity

[Icculus]

The people who really get screwed are those that don't pay any state tax.

and get caught :)

Just move to New Jersey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just move to India. The US goverment will tax the crap out of working Moms and Dads but refuses to tax international trade. Which is ironic because when America was a rising power, we actually taxed imports and exports and corporations. Now that we are a declining power, we only tax working folks and threaten to replace them with guest workers if they complain too much.

Not much of a concern.

[Kadin2048]

Although I'd hate to see spammers taking advantage of this somehow.

I doubt very much that spammers pay taxes anyway. Unless you count the bribes they're probably paying to the Russian mob as "taxes."

Its not exactly how it sounds...

[uarch]

It requires those who sometimes work in the office of their New York employers to pay state taxes -- not only on the income they earn while physically in New York, but also on the income they earn at home. This often results in a double tax when the telecommuter's home state expects tax on the income the telecommuter earns at home."

That applies to a lot more than telecommuting and while its not fun it is definitely not as bad as it sounds. Despite the way this is worded the taxes you pay aren't additive.

A couple years ago I needed to file taxes in 3 states and the taxes came out effectively the same as if I paid a single state at the highest rate (which was NY).

Re:Its not exactly how it sounds...

[gorbachev]

"A couple years ago I needed to file taxes in 3 states and the taxes came out effectively the same as if I paid a single state at the highest rate (which was NY)."

This is the real problem...when you work and live in different states you end up paying taxes on whichever state charges the highest taxes.

Re:New York Sucks!

[Phreakiture]

Stay in New York, New Yahkuhs.

It probably won't surprise you in the least when I say.... Up yours!

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[dkoulomzin]

Well the parent is TOTAL flame bait, but it does also need to be answered. So here's my non-flame reply.

Businesses choose NYC for lots of reasons, some of which are:
1) Lots of other businesses are there. That makes doing business more efficient, since most of it is done face to face.
2) NYSE, and other cornerstones of the financial world are located in NYC
3) Vast numbers of people to employ
4) Several world-class Universities are located in NYC or its environs, so there is no shortage of brain-power

All of these things in one way or another rely on taxes, be it for transportation or other infrastructure.

And btw, if you are employed by a company in NYC, you are taking advantage of NYC, even if you never go there. The fact is without NYC, that particular job wouldn't exist.

No, I'm not a New Yorker. I live in Boston.

When in New York...

[i am kman]

Well, NY has long had the right to tax nonresident employees whose income comes from NY services. That's been an decades long debate for out-of-state commuters as well as the newer debate amongst telecommuters.

That's a penalty to an employer and employee who sets up shop in NYC - just deal with it. Or leave.

So, if the employer really liked you and wanted to support telecommuting, they'd just setup a satellite office in NJ or Connecticut and host a few servers there so that could be your main location. So blame your damned employer because they could easily fix the problem if they cared enough about you to actually do something. But, no, your bosses want that prestigious NYC address and don't want to help the little guy.

PS I recognize the problems with telecommuting or even commuting double taxation. But local/state tax laws are deeply mired in local politics and if business just started setting up shop (or just satellite offices) in places with more commuter/tele-commuter friendly locations, the problem solves itself.

Re:When in New York...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a penalty to an employer and employee who sets up shop in NYC - just deal with it. Or leave.

That's exactly what I did; I left.

Taxation without representation

[FlyerFanNC]

If you live e.g. in New Jersey, how can New York expect you to pay taxes, since you don't vote for anyone in New York?

Several years ago, the city of Miami decided to raise taxes on parking so it could extort money from those workers who commuted from Broward county and otherwise were not paying for services in Miami-Dade. Someone sued the city for taxation without representation, since he lived in Broward and so could not participate in Miami-Dade elections. I believe the state supreme court agreed with him, and the city had to make other plans to get the revenue for the sports venue they were planning.

Re:Taxation without representation

[SydShamino]

>>> Several years ago, the city of Miami decided to raise taxes on parking so it could extort money from those workers who commuted from Broward county and otherwise were not paying for services in Miami-Dade. Someone sued the city for taxation without representation, since he lived in Broward and so could not participate in Miami-Dade elections. I believe the state supreme court agreed with him, and the city had to make other plans to get the revenue for the sports venue they were planning.

If that happened, that sounds pretty stupid. When I go on vacation to Miami, should I be allowed to refuse sales taxes on the souvenir crap I buy, because I didn't live there to vote on the tax rate?

Perhaps you meant that they were trying to add a surcharge on private parking facilities? I don't see that as illegal, either; surcharges are often allowed on specific services. Maybe Florida's laws are more restrictive.

Re:Taxation without representation

[ScentCone]

If you live e.g. in New Jersey, how can New York expect you to pay taxes, since you don't vote for anyone in New York?

I'm guessing the reasoning goes like this: you have the choice to do your business in another state if you don't like what happens when you go out of your current state of residence and earn money in that otherstate (NY). For example, you could telecommute and occasionally make a trip to Delaware, and have none of that tax liability. Or Nevada. But you're choosing to make money in NY, and this is the price the people of NY want to charge you for playing host to the place where you're making your cash.

Re:Taxation without representation

[aztec rain god]

I think it depends on the state you're from, but as a Montanan (where there is no sales tax), it is sometimes worthwhile to go to Idaho or Washington for a big ticket item, flash my MT drivers license, fill out a little form, and pay no sales tax. I'm pretty sure all states have to honor that, but since most states have sales taxes it isn't worth messing with.

Re:Taxation without representation

[LunaticTippy]

That's confusing. I know people whove driven across the state line to pay no tax in Montana.

I always thought you pay whatever rate for the state/county/city the business was located in.

Re:Taxation without representation

[Eristone]

If that happened, that sounds pretty stupid. When I go on vacation to Miami, should I be allowed to refuse sales taxes on the souvenir crap I buy, because I didn't live there to vote on the tax rate?

Actually, yes. Well, the process is you keep all of your receipts, fill out the proper paperwork[PDF Warning] and send it in to get your refund. Then you fill out the appropriate forms in your state of residence and write a check to your state tax board based on what the sales tax would be had you made your purchase in your home state.

Re:Taxation without representation

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. Well, the process is you keep all of your receipts, fill out the proper paperwork[PDF Warning] and send it in to get your refund. Then you fill out the appropriate forms in your state of residence and write a check to your state tax board based on what the sales tax would be had you made your purchase in your home state.

What happens should I leave off that last step?

Re:Taxation without representation

[schoaff]

Not exactly what happened. The problem had nothing to do with "Taxation without Representation" it had to do with the fact that the law was missing a few words which made it only apply to Miami. That was what the court said was not allowed in Florida. The state law that authorized the surcharge said the surchard could be levied by cities facing a financial emergency if they had a population of 300k on a certain day. By writing it this way it applied only to Miami and the courts found that unconstitutional. After they court ruled they simply rewrote the law to include "and from that day forward" so that any city of 300k in Florida facing the same problem could put a surcharge on parking. That was ruled OK and the surcharge was put back in place.

Re:Taxation without representation

[SydShamino]

That document seems to apply only to people (businesses, individuals) who made payments to the state based on sales tax they were supposed to collect on behalf of the state. In other words, they are not end consumers, they are business people. The document is for cases where they paid sales tax revenue to the state that they didn't collect, or that needed to be refunded based on the sale condition (i.e. lemon car, or the person who bought the items was a dealer themselves, and didn't have to pay tax).

None of the qualifying conditions are for individuals who live out of state.

Re:Taxation without representation

[fishbowl]

"But you're choosing to make money in NY, and this is the price the people of NY want to charge you for playing host to the place where you're making your cash."

I would add, "making your cash, and removing it entirely from the state's economy."

They do have a point (which I disagree with) that that money should carry a higher premium.

You are also, arguably, taking a job away from a New York resident.

Re:Taxation without representation

[ScentCone]

I would add, "making your cash, and removing it entirely from the state's economy."

That's only if the company you're working for (in NY) doesn't itself make any money off of the work you're doing. That NY company pays corporate taxes, and is by its proximity to thousands of other NY businesses, participating plenty in the state economy. You've got to look at it from the other perspective: if the NJ telecommuter wasn't there to help produce what that NY company's customers are looking to buy, that cash (only a part of which goes to the NJ-based employee) might not change hands at all without his participation.

You are also, arguably, taking a job away from a New York resident.

Why, because NY residents aren't as able to do the work? Or because the NJ residents (who are paying more taxes, currently) are willing to work for less? There's a lot of competition out there. If the NY economy is so intent on making everything about itself sky-high expensive, then they simply can't be shocked when local businesses competing with firms in other parts of the country and the world choose their staff based on hitting a financial and professional sweet spot. If they can't make money doing that, they'll be out of business, including out any local jobs they provide. If they do make money, NY takes a nice big chunk in corporate taxes, not to mention taxes off of the other companies that serve that company (by renting them office space, and so on).

Re:Taxation without representation

[fishbowl]

"That's only if the company you're working for (in NY) doesn't itself make any money off of the work you're doing. That NY company pays corporate taxes, and is by its proximity to thousands of other NY businesses, participating plenty in the state economy. "

Fair enough. But you're misunderstanding the purpose of personal taxes: The government has a vested interest in ensuring that it remains difficult for you to become prosperous, and thus, become a threat to their authority.

"
Why, because NY residents aren't as able to do the work? Or because the NJ residents (who are paying more taxes, currently) are willing to work for less? There's a lot of competition out there."

They figured out a way to get a piece of the action. They extract it from the worker. And the worker will either tolerate it or he will not. If he chooses "not", the full impact will be more on the order of "quitting and getting a gig elsewhere", and certainly not on the order of "leading an armed rebellion to overthrow the regime of tyranny."

Before you mod me down to "loony", do bear in mind that the last time there was a major issue with taxation in that region, that is precisely what it came down to. Violent rebellion targeted at a full-scale overthrow of the state...

Re:Taxation without representation

[Anonymous Coward]

Try saying that to DC residents - they have to pay federal taxes and do not have a voting representative in Congress.

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[F_Scentura]

"Because Florida is a total dogturd of a state, only beaten by Texas in repugnancy. Move your company there and you'll only get utter shitbags to work for you."

Ever been to South Florida? It *is* almost exactly how he describes. The GIT R DUNN morons are all north of here, thankfully.

Their attitude costs NY

[Anonymous Coward]

I turned down a contract offer because of NY's tax stance. That and the unwillingness of the company offering the contract to adjust their pay rate to compensate me for the fact I was going to get nailed 3 times (NY state taxes, my state taxes, and Fed taxes).

The end result: NY got nothing.

Re:New York Sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yankees suck! Go Sox!!!

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure I stand alone in this, but isn't his just another stupid way of making exceptions in some cases, and thus making taxes MORE complicated?
Instead of looking out for numero uno all the time shouldn't we be looking into lowering taxes all around? stop the $$ from bleeding out of gov't in general?
Is a flat tax the answer? I don't know.
But at some point shouldn't we all be thinking "boy this is really braindead" and find ways to fix the real problems?
Now is a good time, call for reps to halt the obvious 'pork' and other stupid expenditures. In times of doubt, republicans throw money out to whomever is complaining. Democrats find reasons to even if there are none. Why can't we stop pissing away our tax money and use it for things that work. The Katrina cleanup? disaster in all ways, we dumped more money into that region and look where it is now. From that perspective it has nothing to do with this specific gov, it has to do with the way we disseminate the cash.

case in point, fence on the border, $3mil a mile. WOW

Re:hmm

[VoidWraith]

You can't make taxes simple: it would be bad for accountants and CPAs' business!

Fairness?

[d_54321]

If passed, the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act would prevent states from taxing income earned by nonresidents who telecommute to an in-state employer while working from home.
Why not just go all the way and not tax income?

Re:Fairness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just go all the way and not tax income?

In our fucking dreams.

No fucking lie - I was talking to some folks, and I asked one who used to be an IRS employee. She actually said, and it sickens me, that the Fair Tax was too easily abused. She then used an example of how the current tax system can be abused as a reason for H.R. 25 to be shot down!

Additionally and unfortunately, because sales taxes are by economists' definition regressive, many folks dismiss HR 25 out of hand!

It's this , I don't know, stupidity or unwillingness to actually LOOK at the facts that is going to kill the Fair Tax. It just sickens me!

It would hellp this economy so much! It would bring companies that moved off-shore for tax breaks back to the US!

Re:Fairness?

[Jason Smith]

I came on here to post that, but you beat me to it.

It neatly solves the whole "where are you taxed" vs. "where are you at" issue... when you're in NY, you're presumably paying for food, lodging, gas, etc -> NY gets a cut based on how long you're there. When you're in your home state, your home state gets the rest.

If you spend 36 days working in NY, you're going to be giving NY ~10% of your sales tax, assuming you spend as much (although it's usually more like 'as little' from my travelling). Automatically allocated according to location. Done.

FairTax is the best chance we've had in, well, 60 years, to get out from under the incredibly convoluted, oppressive, easily abused and easily dodged tax system we have now. And we're going to piss it away because fearmongers rule.

Re:Fairness?

[Anonymous Coward]

But fair tax puts everyone on welfare. You pay ALOT in sales, and each month the feds cut you a check depending on how POOR you are. Under fairtax, most people are 'poor', and most middle income people end up on this welfare.

From reading the docs:

Also, if a store DOESN'T pay the sales tax to the fed, you are still responsible for owing the tax. You think IRS audits are bad now, imagine the audit involving EVERY single sales transaction you've done. Every shirt, sandwhich and cup of coffee you bought, you could potentially be liable for if the store you bought from wasn't sending the tax reciepts to the feds. You'd have to save ALL your reciepts just in case you got audited. Not just pay stubs and W2s like now. If some large chain store goofs up, every one of their customers becomes liable to be investigated and held accountable for the sales tax that store didn't pay. So you'll have a fat envelope of little slips of paper, and hope you saved every little slip of paper!

And what if the feds ever get 'shut down' like the last big budget impasse that lasted a few weeks. That one prevented Soc Sec checks from being printed. Would it stop those refund checks too? Would stores automatically stop collecting the double digit uber-sales tax? Or would you still have to pay out the nose for basic necessities while the feds are incapable of sending you your refund due to the shutdown?

Would you like to be in the position that the elderly were put in?

Re:Fairness?

[geekoid]

because the fairtax is flawed.

Re:Fairness?

[Jason Smith]

Uh, I think you were reading something else. Maybe FUD?

The store is the single point of revenue, reporting, and auditing. There is no personal audit. If you pay to a store, they are responsible for passing it along *JUST LIKE ANY OTHER SALES TAX*. Your tax reporting burden is... zero. None. Nada. Zilch.

The auditing process is done through the stores. There are already mechanisms for doing this for regular sales tax. The burden to the retail store is minimal as well, *and* HR25 includes financial aid for assisting businesses in setting it up.

There is no auditing.

There is no tax reporting on your part.

As for your stalled checks scenario - bzzzt. Everyone gets the same check, regardless of your income, it has nothing to do with your income level, or how poor you are. You get refunded the amount of sales tax you paid on the minimum amount needed to support the number of dependents you reported. That's it. Think of it as getting the sales tax on your standard deduction back in monthly installments.

I really think you need to read what FairTax is before you start spreading FUD around willy-nilly, it's obvious you've been fed a line.

Re:Fairness?

[d_54321]

Awesome. Wow. That argument blows me out of the water. No way I find anything missing in your solid rebuttal. You sure told me.
Wanna try that again with some details?

While you're at it, try quantifying and qualifying the flaws with the FairTax, then compare and contrast with the current income tax system. Let me know what you come up with.

Re:Fairness?

[d_54321]

In our fucking dreams.
The same thing was once said about women voting, slavery abolition, civil rights, and the like.

No fucking lie...
Yeah, thanks AC. I'll just add a grain of salt to your story... Mmm, that's some salty anecdote.

sales taxes are by economists' definition regressive
OK, I'll bite.
True, sales taxes are by economists' definition regressive. The FairTax is a sales tax. However (and this is a tricky part, so to anyone who doesn't look at the facts, try to stay with me), the prebate part of the plan makes it progressive and makes it the only tax reform plan that completely removes the federal tax burden from Americans living at the poverty level.

Re:Fairness?

[Anonymous Coward]

That so-called "fair tax" is overly complicated and is not fair.

Let's start with the fairness aspect. From what I can tell, it slams huge sales and use taxes on the general population and "surplus" is redistributed to those that make the least money.

First of all, sales and use taxes are inherently stupid. If I sell an item, then the buyer sells it, then the second buyer sells it, each transaction gets a sales tax applied unless each buyer has a tax exemption. So double taxation already becomes an issue. Then there's the whole use-tax-jurisdiction problem seen in the mail- and internet-order taxation issues in recent years.

Secondly, it requires everyone to be honest AND active participants. Now, I'm sure there are forms and crap that have to be filled out. So we already introduce some bureaucracy to keep people honest. Then there's the tracking aspect. Sales and use taxes are handled by businesses. "The poor people" are not businesses. How are you going to apportion to "the poor people" if you don't know how much they make? Wouldn't that verge on being income taxation? How do you know they bought anything at all? Maybe they're just collecting the tax kickbacks and living off the land? These people would, without contributing to the economy that pays them, be leeching from society. Maybe they drive expensive cars and own mansions, but they're reporting miniscule wages because they inherited money? They would be "poor" from an income perspective, but would be quite rich and would get larger kickbacks than people who really needed them.

Third, there are people that flat-out deserve the squalor they live in. Lazy, uneducated (and proud of it!), and otherwise unfit people do not deserve welfare or kickbacks. They're breathing precious air, taking up precious space, and doing nothing but causing hardship on others. We shouldn't have a system that props them up. It sounds cruel, but that's just too bad. Survival of the fittest, blah, blah, blah. You've heard this before.

So it's a losing proposition due to corruption and stupidity.

Now let's look at complexity. The aforementioned system would require similar amounts of paperwork and enforcement, but would totally screw those that are carrying their own weight. So how do we avoid this?

1) A flat rate tax.
2) A proper and logical tax collector/constituency relationship.

How do we get these things? Well, (1) is easy. Just set a number. Start out with something simple like 10%. (And all the religious fundies will go for that, since it's tithing! Instant support!) Number (2) isn't so simple if you aren't a (good) programmer or (good) database guy. Ask yourself, who are the constituents of the US federal government? The people? No. The states and territories. So that's who the feds should collect from. 10% (or other agreed-to rate) of whatever the states bring in. Who are the individual states' constituents? People? No. Counties and municipalities. The state collects 10% (or whatever) from each county or city. Now, where does the city get money? The people and companies that operate within that community. How much? 10%.

So under this system, you would easily know how to calculate your taxes. You send your money to the city/county and they calculate their taxes and send funds to the state. The state then calculates their taxes and sends it on to the feds. Everyone gets money in the proper proportion, and everyone has a single point of contact and failure in the collection system. Now you programmers and database guys know what I'm talking about. Not just accountability, but a repeatable and reliable system. This is what's known as "good design", and it doesn't just apply to machines. You can socially engineer a logical system and use these design principles to reduce complexity and abuse.

That would be a truly fair tax.

Re:Fairness?

[d_54321]

From what I can tell, it slams huge sales and use taxes on the general population
You're not understanding how it work. The FairTax is revenue neutral- all it does is expose the currrent cost of the federal government. If you are complaining that the tax rate is too high, it's because the government is costing too much, in which case, the tax rate is not the problem.

and "surplus" is redistributed to those that make the least money.
Everyone receives the prebate, regardless of what they make. Surplus doesn't enter into it.

If I sell an item, then the buyer sells it, then the second buyer sells it, each transaction gets a sales tax applied unless each buyer has a tax exemption.
Lemme rephrase your comment: "Are items taxed more than once?" Good question. No, the FairTax is imposed only on the retail sale of new items. Used items are not taxed under the FairTax.

it requires everyone to be honest AND active participants.
And this differs from our current income tax system how? I'll tell you how: Under the current system, tax evasion requires only one person to lie on their tax forms (or just not submit them). Under the FairTax, it requires collusion of both the payor and the payee.

Now, I'm sure there are forms and crap that have to be filled out.
Correctomundo! Except whereas the forms have to be filled out by everyone under our current income tax system, the forms only have to be filled out by tax collectors- the seller, payees- under the FairTax. This drops the count of tax collection points from about 140 million to about 20 million. Makes it a bit easier to reduce the amount of tax evasion, wouldn't you say?

How are you going to apportion to "the poor people" if you don't know how much they make?
Ah! Another beautiful part of the FairTax- it doesn't matter how much you make. The amount apportioned is dependent on how much is spent. Under the current income tax system, you can be rich and pay zero taxes to the IRS on April 15th because you make no income, living off inheritance or "living off the land" as you say. The FairTax on the other hand doesn't let people get away with this. It doesn't tax based on income.

unfit people do not deserve welfare or kickbacks.
The FairTax does not increase or decrease welfare benefits. If you want welfare to be reduced, vote accordingly.

I'd go on responding to this, but I don't have time and besides have given you a lot to think about, AC.

That only makes sense

[donutello]

State tax rates are progressive. What that means is that someone earning $100k pays more than twice what someone earning $50k would pay. If you split your $100k paycheck between 2 states with identical tax rates, you shouldn't end up paying any less or more than someone who earned the entire income in one of those 2 state. Other states tax laws work the same way too - this isn't just NY.

Re:That only makes sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If you split your $100k paycheck between 2 states with identical tax rates, you shouldn't end up paying any less or more than someone who earned the entire income in one of those 2 state. Other states tax laws work the same way too - this isn't just NY.

On the other hand, if I increase my NJ income to $60k, that shouldn't affect my NY tax burden.

Re:That only makes sense

[donutello]

On the other hand, if I increase my NJ income to $60k, that shouldn't affect my NY tax burden.

If you buy into the idea of a progressive tax system then yes, it should.

Let's say you have two states that both charge 10% tax for the first 50k and 20% for every dollar above that. A "simple" tax scheme would just charge you tax based upon your income in that state. A "complex" tax scheme would have each state tax you based upon your total income.

Scenario 1:
State A income: $100k
State B income: $0k

"Simple" tax - $15k
"Complex" tax - $15k

Scenario 2:
State A income: $50k
State B income: $50k

"Simple" tax - State A $5k, State B $5k = $10k
"Complex" tax - State A tax = 50% of tax on $100k = $7.5k, State B $7.5k = $15k

Scenario 3: (You raise your total income to $110k)
State A income: $110k
State B income: $0

"Simple" tax = $17k
"Complex" tax = $17k

Scenario 4: (You raise your income in one state to $60k)
State A income: $60k
State B income: $50k

"Simple" tax - State A tax = $7k, State B tax = $5k. Total = $12k
"Complex" tax - State A tax = 6/11 of tax on $110k = 6/11 * 17k. State B tax = 5/11 of tax on $110k = 5/11 * 17k. Total tax = $17k.

As you can see, taxing you based on your total income is the only way to ensure that you're paying the same amount in tax as someone who earns the same amount in one state.

Re:That only makes sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

As you can see, taxing you based on your total income is the only way to ensure that you're paying the same amount in tax as someone who earns the same amount in one state.

You're missing the point. Income wholly in one state shouldn't affect the other state's tax revenue. NYC has no claim on income in NJ just because I also work in NYC some of the time.

Re:That only makes sense

[donutello]

If you buy into the idea that people who earn more should pay a higher rate than those who earn less, the ONLY way to make that happen is to tax you based upon your total income, regardless of which state it is earned in.

Re:That only makes sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If you buy into the idea that people who earn more should pay a higher rate than those who earn less, the ONLY way to make that happen is to tax you based upon your total income, regardless of which state it is earned in.

You haven't answered the question: what claim does New York have on income derived from outside its borders?

Re:That only makes sense

[donutello]

It doesn't have any claim to that income and doesn't claim to have any. They are not taxing your non-New York income, only for your New York income. Your tax rate, however, is determined by your worldwide income, not just your New York income.

Someone who earns $80k in NJ and $20k in NY, should pay NY taxes on his $20k income at the same rate as a New Yorker who makes $100k or you've just created a gigantic loophole in the progressive tax system.

Re:That only makes sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Your tax rate, however, is determined by your worldwide income, not just your New York income.

Based on what rationale? If I make 100k investing in some tourist destination in Thailand, NYC has no claim on that and should not use it as a basis for taxing me. The feds may have a case for that, as I live in the US fulltime and am presumably protected along with my stacks of cash.

Someone who earns $80k in NJ and $20k in NY, should pay NY taxes on his $20k income at the same rate as a New Yorker who makes $100k or you've just created a gigantic loophole in the progressive tax system.

So what? We've got gigantic loopholes for the upper class, why not have one or two for the middle class? You can always base deductions on total income - no EITC or whatever for someone making 100k, but what is lost if a few people are only taxed at the 20k rate for their NYC income? They can make that shortfall up by cutting back on the ridiculous subsidies they pay business to stay in Manhattan.

Re:That only makes sense

[donutello]

Based on what rationale?

The rationale that people making more should pay a higher tax rate. They use your worldwide income to determine how much you make and, therefore, what your tax rate should be. They are not laying any claim to your income in Thailand, they just want to know what it is to determine what rate they should tax you at.

The tax system is pretty screwed up and I definitely don't agree with it and all the loopholes there are in it. I'm not defending the system. I'm just explaining the rationale behind a state determining your tax rate based upon your worldwide income.

Re:That only makes sense

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The rationale that people making more should pay a higher tax rate. They use your worldwide income to determine how much you make and, therefore, what your tax rate should be.

Again, what rationale does NY have for taxing me on money I make in another state? Where do they even get off demanding that I report that income, supposing that I live in NJ? NJ should be the only state that needs to know about that.

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many great cities in this country, but that doesn't give them the right to tax me just because I might derive some benefit from it. (directly or indirectly) When I lived in CT. and commuted into NY I had to pay NY State, NY City, and Federal Tax on my income and my wife's entire income. My wife did NOT work in NY, she worked in CT. It sucked. I solved the problem by moving to Oregon.

Now NY City and State don't get anything from me.

NY is shooting itself in the foot. When I was there a lot of businesses were moving to NJ and CT for the very reasons that it was a heck of a lot cheaper. Some of the functions stayed there, but most of them moved out. For example, Metropolitan Life in the early 1960's was the single largest private employer in NY City. Now their offices are mainly empty haviong moved most of those people out of the state. Sure Met Life is still domociled in NY; advantages as a NY Insurer, but a lot of the jobs were moved to NJ and elsewhere.

Whatever happened to no taxation

[kunakida]

without representation?

As a telecommuter, you're not consuming any services from the other state.

If they get really sticky about it, just describe your home as a branch office (in which you are based) with all your office space and equipment being leased by you to the company in question.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[Stormy Dragon]

The doctrine that representation is tied to taxation has been defunct for decades, in favor of the more 'progressive' one man, one vote standard.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[bano]

You control the representation(or lack of) by choosing not to work where you live.
If you lived some place and did not get representation that would be different.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[feijai]

Tell that to the residents of Washington, DC. They must pay federal income tax, but get no representation in Congress. In fact, they are the only principality in the US in which this is the case. One man, zero votes. Taxation without representation. Given that their city is essentially beholden to Congress, whose representatives don't care about them, AND that the residents of DC are by and large black and poor, this is a pretty awful situation.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[Farfromlosin]

"without representation?"

It was a great battlecry in 1776, but that's pretty much where it endend. It's not a law, nor a right, and still exists in the USA! Just have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_taxation_without_r epresentation Washington, DC's license plates....

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[Todd Knarr]

Yes, but Washington DC wasn't supposed to be a city in the conventional sense. It was supposed to be the seat of Federal government, period. The only people supposed to be living there would be Federal employees who weren't supposed to have a direct say in their own authority.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[feijai]

I'm pretty sure that's NOT why DC didn't have voting representation. The concern was that DC would ultimately become not only the capital of the country but -- as was the case for other "capitals" in Europe -- the largest and most powerful city. Fear of the rise of monarchy was significant. It's also quaint, and these days, detrimental. Basically we have a half a million poor people, without easy mobility, denied voting representation in Congress largely because the Republicans fear that if given the voting rights they deserved as citizens, they'll vote Democrat.

Re:Whatever happened to no taxation

[The Conductor]

That is why the size of the capital is limited to "10 miles square". The founders expected DC to be something like a military base, self-contained and disconnected from the local politics. They didn't anticipate the colossal size of today's federal gov't; in fact they wanted to prevent it. The seat of gov't today is now spread out all over MD and northern VA, while most of DC is a colony of urban blight. The locigal solution (to me) is to reduce the size of DC to just the capitol, white house, and federal gov't buildings between. The rest of DC would revert back to MD like Arlington county in the 1860's.

But I would guess MD doesn't want it back. Maybe a $10 billion dowry is called for.

The way to fix this is simple...

[zappepcs]

well, more or less, try http://www.fairtax.org/ for a different method of taxation that would not care what state you earned the money in or from.

Re:The way to fix this is simple...

[Jon Luckey]

try http://www.fairtax.org/ for a different method of taxation that would not care what state you earned the money in or from

Amazing. A national federal sales tax is supposed to eliminate State (i.e. non-federal) income taxes? The issue in TFA is double taxation by two different States, not the Federal government taxing someone twice.

Re:The way to fix this is simple...

[evilviper]

It continues to amaze me the trememdous ammount of money and effort the rich put into trying to increase the gap even further...

You have to make a special case for the poor, because that's where everyone looks first, but it just has to SOUND like it will help them... it can actually increase the burden on most of them even more than the current situation, as almost nobody will check the numbers, or ask for specifics.

But you don't have any such restriction on the middle class. Everyone's worried about the poor, but nobody pays attention when you suggest vastly increasing the tax burden on the middle-class. Gee, I wonder why the very rich and poor vote Republican, while the middle-class doesn't...

And lies by omission are fair game... You don't need to bring up the list of the unlimited ways someone can circumvent the new tax system, but be sure and mention ALL of the (few) ways you can with the current system. Also, saying the rich spend more, not mentioning that it's only spend a fraction as much of their income as the middle-class and the poor spend, is a great way to garnish support for your proposal.

Re:The way to fix this is simple...

[d_54321]

You don't need to bring up the list of the unlimited ways someone can circumvent the new tax system, but be sure and mention ALL of the (few) ways you can with the current system.
From here: ...whereas tax evasion under the current income tax system requires only one person (the payor) to lie on their tax forms, tax evasion under the FairTax requires collusion of both the payor (the retail purchaser) and the payee (the retail seller). Furthermore, the number of individuals required to file taxes drops from approximately 140 million to 20 million. This ~86% drop in the number of collection points will allow the federal tax administration to assess tax fraud with greater scrutiny.

Read more, then reconsider your implied objections. If you still have them, come back and state them explicitly.

Re:The way to fix this is simple...

[d_54321]

Could be if this FairTax thing passes, folks will start demanding a similar system from their states. Stranger things have happened.

LMAO

[pkcs11]

Of maybe the 150 or so people I know in the tech business, "telecommuting" is a euphamism for taking the day off.

The problem isn't taxation

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

The problem is government spending out of control.

I don't know exactly how much typical state expenditures rose, but if we could reduce the federal budget to what it was only ten years ago, we could simply cut lots of taxes altogether.

Re:The problem isn't taxation

[BCW2]

The problem is the various thundering herds of dumbass we call congress and the state legislatures. They have never seen a nickle they can't waste. Remember, they vote for all the spending bills, the President or Governor only signs them. So who is really at fault? Look at Federal spending bills and see what little extras get tacked on to each one as ammendments, most of which have nothing to do with the original bill. That is your so called representatives at work. If OUR money was being spent wisely, the federal budget could be 30% - 50% smaller. Most states have a similar problem.

"If you send it, they WILL spend it" - GWB spring 2001 pushing for tax cuts.

Re:The problem isn't taxation

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

100% ACK.

Now could somebody explain why my simple observation was modded Troll?

Re:The problem isn't taxation

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you send it, they WILL spend it" - GWB spring 2001 pushing for tax cuts.

The problem now is that the Republicans will spend it, even if nobody sent it. I don't like a "tax and spend" mentality, but it's still far better than a "borrow and spend" mentality. If the government wants to spend like a drunker sailor, they shouldn't masking the problem by borrowing heavily to do it. GWB can only blame his party for out of control federal spending. They could put a stop to it, but they refuse.

Re:The problem isn't taxation

[BCW2]

Party affiliation is a joke. The democraps add just as much waste to every spending bill as the repulipricks do. They ALL spend worse than a "drunken sailor", I should know since I used to be one! USN Submarine Service 1976 - 1980.

There's a better way.

[jcr]

Once again, this is one of many obnoxious pitfalls of income taxes. Support the Fair Tax, both at the federal and state levels.

-jcr

Re:There's a better way.

[DigiShaman]

Great minds think alike :)

Yes, I support the Fair Tax system too. I'm just missing the "offtopic" mod too. So mod me down you socialist fuckers!

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[benzapp]

Sure Met Life is still domociled in NY; advantages as a NY Insurer, but a lot of the jobs were moved to NJ and elsewhere.

Not only that, the Met Life building will soon be converted into condominium apartments.

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[dkoulomzin]

So are you saying your wife's income was doubly taxed? Yes, that seems unjust, and I think we should seek to address that. I don't think more than one state should be entitled to taxing any given dollar you earn. However, I don't think your problem had anything to do with telecommuting (unless I missed something in your description). BTW, did you consider filing seperately? I bet that could have allowed your wife to pay CT taxes only/instead, if that better suited your desires. (And if you considered that, and chose not to file that way, then you hardly have a gripe.)

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[Jaywalk]

There's little benefit for big business

Excuse me? How do you figure? At this very moment, my butt is parked in an Michigan office with a tie around my neck doing work I could do at home in my bunny slippers. I've got an office all set up there and a high speed line to work with. Now assuming a $100 per hour billing rate, the client is shelling out about $4000 a week for my services. They're also shelling out about $1900 a week to fly me out from Boston, drive around in a rental car and sleep in a hotel.

Are you saying big business wants to pay a 50% premium on consulting services?

*sigh*

[19thNervousBreakdown]

If only.

Give it up

[metamatic]

Taxation without representation happens all the time. That boat set sail a long, long time ago.

Marbury vs. Madison

[penguinstorm]

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

It's an issue for the courts.

What about representation

[BigGar']

I think that any district that you pay taxes in you should also be allowed to vote in district wide elections (State, County, City). You should have a say in how things are being run if you are paying for it's support.

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[corbettw]

At this very moment, my butt is parked in an Michigan office with a tie around my neck doing work I could do at home in my bunny slippers.

You can post on Slashdot in your bunny slippers? Who knew!

This is really simple

[Mr.Surly]

Are you allowed to vote in the jurisdiction that's attempting to tax you?

From a moral stance, you're hardly obligated to pay taxes to a government that doesn't allow you to elect representatives. Especially in America.

(Notice I didn't say "... to a government that doesn't represent you.")

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[penguinstorm]

According to your "I called it first" theory of jurisprudence, London should be able to tax New Yorkers and all Vancouverites should be tithed by the Centre of the Know Universe -- Toronto.

Seems unlikely to fly to me.

Taxation, Representation

[Lord Ender]

If NY is going to charge me taxes for telecommuting there, they had better let me VOTE there, too!

If one dime of my income tax money goes to NY, and they don't let me vote for the representatives that decide what those taxes are, I think its time to make some salty tea in NY.

Re:Taxation, Representation

[BCW2]

My Grandfather bought some land in NM in the 1940's and put it in a trust for the kids and grandkids. Now whenever the trust has a disbursment you are supposed to file a NM tax return. It doesn't matter where you live. This law was passed without my input since I have no representation in NM as I am not a resident. It has so far cost the residents of NM more than they have collected since any NM tax is done after the state income tax where you live and nobody in the family has paid a nickle yet, but they have to process the extra paperwork. No I will never e-file this one, they have to go through the paper and spend the payroll. I will gladly join any lawsuit against NM for taxation without representation. I hope everyone that has this issue with any state will do the same.

Let's bring back the spirit of 1776!

You mean to tell me

[iminplaya]

that it takes an act of congress to get a fair tax? Well, here again, the employees need to discuss what they net, and the tax should be declared and paid by the business as a condition of their liscense or corporate charter. And the employee should need to confirm or deny only if the company gets audited. And even then, the signed check and other receipts should be all that is necessary to confirm who was paid what. Remember, it's the Internal Revenue Service. They are supposed to serve us, not the other way around.

Re:You mean to tell me

[geekoid]

no, the serve a body of government, not us.

Re:You mean to tell me

[Geminii]

Trust me, you got served.

Re:You mean to tell me

[iminplaya]

Then it should be called "Department of Internal Revenue" like various states do. Now in fact, I'm making fun. The IRS is very helpful to those who ask. They'll even fill out the forms for you (with the disclaimer that they're not responsible for mistakes...kinda "ironic" to say the least). So, it's like when they have the gun to your head, you don't have to take your own wallet out of your pocket. They'll more than happy to do it for you. Or even more like Jane taking the whole wallet and leaving George with a single bill. I kid! I kid! I LOVE the IRS!

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[pete6677]

Are you saying big business wants to pay a 50% premium on consulting services?
 
In many cases they do. I wish I knew the reason.

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[necrognome]

Crime, you say? Take a look at the comparative positions of NY metro areas (more than just NYC) vs. FL metro areas with regard to crime.

Debating the Merits of Various Forms of Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you all realize that the entire notion of the Income Tax as a method of getting government revenue is fundamentally insane.

So getting excited whenever one group of inmates in one part of the asylum are suddenly granted relief is like a schizophrenic who suddenly notices one of the hundred-odd voices in his head has inexplicably gone silent.

No longer does the patient dare to even dream there could be a cure. He is ecstatic just to experience the occasional respite from his oppressors.

I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but...

[westcoaster004]

... some people will never learn the difference between effect and affect:
"The issue effects not only employees but also employers."

And this, from a senior editor no less! Tsk tsk...

Re:I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... you have it backwards.

"The issue affects not only employees but also employers," is correct.

See the entry for the transitive verb, "affect" at www.m-w.com:

Main Entry: affect
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from affectus, past participle of afficere
: to produce an effect upon: as a : to produce a material influence upon or alteration in (paralysis affected his limbs) b : to act upon (as a person or a person's mind or feelings) so as to effect a response : INFLUENCE
usage see EFFECT

Re:I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says, "The issue effects not only employees but also employers."
"Affects" would be correct.

Let me just say

[Associate]

fuck new york

Live in a better state

[Anonymous Coward]

Seven states have no state income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

Alaska also has no state sales tax or property tax. I make absolutely sure to declare my residency ten ways from Sunday on any out-of-state project I'm working on.

Or I can just be an independent contractor, if the sales tax laws (i.e., none) work better than the income tax laws.

More tax breaks!

[fiendy]

Well if its one thing the US needs, its more tax breaks. Just run up the deficit some more. Its free money. Its not at all like mortgaging your future or anything.

Enjoy your cheap Chinese goods while you still can, they won't be cheap for long.

Re:More tax breaks!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well if its one thing the US needs, its more tax breaks. Just run up the deficit some more. Its free money. Its not at all like mortgaging your future or anything.

Enjoy your cheap Chinese goods while you still can, they won't be cheap for long."

Cheap Chinese goods have little to do with a government that wantonly wastes money whenever and wherever it can.

Tax money generally goes to political bullshit, whereas your Chinese goods are a result of corporate bullshit.

Re:More tax breaks!

[fishbowl]

"Cheap Chinese goods have little to do with a government that wantonly wastes money whenever and wherever it can.
"

Why should anybody care? The money they are wasting today won't even be backed by labor or any other resources for six generations in the future. Nobody living today will be held accountable, and except for aristocratic families, their names will not even be known by their great-great-great grandchildren.

Re:More tax breaks!

[fiendy]

Exactly, its passing the buck. There will be a reckoning, but who knows, the correction may not come in this lifetime, though the way things are progressing it probably will. And cheap Chinese goods in a consumerist society are a factor. Take a look at the trade deficit. Having a massive trade and budget deficit at the same time is generally not considered to be a good thing, not to mention, not sustainable for a considerable period of time.

Worker still not consuming any of those.

[Kadin2048]

None of the services you mention are being consumed by the telecommuter. They're being consumed by the telecommuter's parent corporation, and should be paid out of that company's taxes (real estate, corporate income, capital gains, etc.).

It seems like what you're really saying is that corporations pay too little taxes: that's a valid concern, but it's separate from where their employees should be paying taxes. All those 'protecting the business climate' types of services should be borne by the corporation, and not dependent on the tax revenues of its employees, who really don't get much of a say in where the company is located.

I think you're vastly overstating the resources being consumed by somebody who is just calling in and remotely working for a corporation. The great majority of tax revenues on state and local levels are spent on things like transportation infrastructure, education, public works, etc. None of those things are being used by the remote employee. They may have contributed to bringing the parent corporation to that area, but that doesn't mean the employees should have to bear the cost: the company should, if they want to be located in a particularly expensive area (i.e. Manhattan).

Re:Worker still not consuming any of those.

[Doc Ruby]

I said "legislating, policing, and judging the protections of the workers ". When the telecommuter's NYC employer doesn't send the pay, NYC's services protect the telecommuter. There are lots of other services like that.

Of course, there are lots of services telecommuters don't consume. They shouldn't have to pay the same taxes, and I never said they did. In fact, telecommuting offers lots of efficiencies in service consumption that should make their overall cost nationwide much lower.

But not zero. That's why I asked how those services are to be paid. No one has yet responded to that simple question. Nor has anyone but you recognized that corporate undertaxation is a problem, even though solving it is much harder (ie, not bloody likely) to solve than fixing the telecommuter tax.

Here's why ----- Re:Why Does Anyone Base

[Anonymous Coward]

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
If I was in L.A.

I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
California dreaming

Stopped into a church
On such a winter's day
Well, I got down on my knees
I passed along the way
And I pretend to pray
You know the preacher likes the cold
He knows I'm gonna stay

California dreaming
On such a winter's day
And the sky is grey
All the leaves are brown

I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
I could leave today
If I didn't tell her
California dreaming
On such a winter's day
On such a winter's day
On such a winter's day
Eat me!

Taxation is for the birds.

[Fantastic Lad]

The idea is this:

The people of a nation collectively put together a pile of money in order to do useful things which everybody agrees they need. Right? Building roads and water supply systems, police agencies, hospitals etc.

But then. . .

Who gets elected? Why, the people who are cut-throat and unfair in their methods. The ones who lie the best. --The ones who are drawn to power!

Why do they win? Because they use all the normal tools to get elected which good people have, PLUS they also use lies and underhanded manipulations. They win over good-hearted people because good-hearted people limit themselves to only using above-board tactics. And so, with limited tool-boxes, the good guys tend to lose more often than the criminals, who arm themselves, not just with above-board tactics like posters and election promises, but also with wonky voting machines and hate-based propaganda about how they will punish, 'welfare moms'. (Which make up a microscopic fraction of the public spending in even the most socialist of nations). But Hate and Dark Side emotions are much easier to kindle in a voting public than rational thought. And anybody who is above hate will lose their vote anyway to a fixed voting machine. And if that doesn't work, the state-owned media will just lie about who won. Or they'll just kill the honest politicians in plane crashes. One way or another, the Dark Side wins time and again. The good guys don't stand a chance once the bad guys get in and own the game board!

So these greedy, morally bankrupt politicians and their industry-owning friends realize, "Hey! Check it out. With my brother-in-law in office, I can get all kinds of policies passed which entitle me to a big slice of that nice juicy public cash pie without my actually having to earn it! People are plenty stupid, they'll believe any old lie, and we just have to organize it so that the state has all the guns. Keen! I can live high and never have to put in a real day of work ever again!"

And so it goes.

But. . .

Because the greedy are greedy, they never feel like they have enough, and so the taxes rise, and the hidden taxes, (such as oil and energy), rise. And they cut away at the actual things a nation would probably want, like education funds and medical care. (You just trick the people through massive propaganda into believing that such things are bad for them. Sounds insane, but look around you.) With social spending cut, there's more money for the greedy politician and his friends and family.

But somehow. . , even with the billions flowing into the politician's family coffers, it's still not enough. This is because greed is NOT good. Greed is a disease! --And so the greedy looked around to find new ways to make even more money, and they realized that it was advantageous to them if the other nations of the world never achieved first-world status. Cheep, 1-cent an hour labor is a great way to get and stay rich! --So they use the secret-service agencies to subvert and de-stabalize nations on the brink of industrial success. This is done through funding coups of legitimate foriegn leaders and channeling heavy narcotics trade through those nations. Drug corridor nations quickly become user nations. (The Opium War in China was a good example of how drugs were used to destroy a nation's growth momentum.)

But high taxes and hidden taxes and entire slave nations are still are not enough for the greedy. Nope. --So they start wars, filling the people with fear, all to ensure that the people are too afraid to think rationally and otherwise recognize that they are being abused by their own government. --Plus, the weapons sales are another excellent way to cut into that nice juicy public cash pie!

So what percentage of your tax dollars do you think are being spent on things the collective public actually wanted in the first place? 30 percent? 20 percent? I'm willing to bet it's even less.

So what do you do about it?

Well, you can't

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all governments are corrupt. Yours might be, but not all.

There's a saying: In a democracy you get the government you deserve. Most (inland) Americans don't know or care about the rest of the world, so when the government can actually know enough about a country to land troops there, that's fricking amazing.

You could enact significant change in the US just by getting more people to vote. While you can do that, I think you should keep the guns at home.

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[fishbowl]

>So what then can be done. . ?

Well, In my dystopian society, being elected to office would be something one would try to avoid. You would be stripped of your name, assets, status, etc., and you would live comfortably, but on a subsitence income while you served your duty. If called, you would faithfully serve the nation because built into the system would be very horrible penalties for doing otherwise.

So you could avoid being called to service by being a criminal, mentally ill, or a failure at business, that sort of thing. Your choice. But NO ONE would ever be drawn to public office out of greed or seeking a venue for corruption. Think "jury duty" but on a much bigger scale, bundled with a system of enforcement and check/balance akin to a military draft.

Okay so my idea isn't developed enough for even a short story, let alone a real solution :-)

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what we can do; let's have some really smart person sit down and pen some kind of manifesto... we shall call it... a "Declaration of Independence".

Then, to drive the point home, we can have some other really smart guys organize an insurrection, so that these good guys will no longer have to do what the other bad guys tell them ever again. With any luck, in 4 or 5 years, they'll have their independence.

Of course immediately after that, everyone will be all cranked up and crazed on the subject of Liberty. They'll turn on each other, and on the original good guys too. So we'll obviously need a constitution or something, to bring order, you know. We'll even throw in a Bill of Rights, so people aren't quite as spooked by all of the power we are granting ourselves.

The Constitution sounds like a good idea, but after a couple of hundred years, no one will be able to read it because by that time it will seem like old english. Not to worry, we won't bother teaching people about how the system is supposed to work. And all those pesky rights in the Bill of Rights, well, surely no one would believe they were meant to be taken literally... they pose too many ethical dilemnas anyway. We can wittle away at those in the name of SECURITY and oogabooga... TERRORISM.

Do you see where we are headed here? We've actually already done this, or so I thought. How about we just get serious about bringing these rogue assholes to account for breaking the original Social Contract?

Because for SURE, these people are MUCH worse than King George ever was, even if they are OUR assholes!

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[sconeu]

See Arthur C. Clarke, "Imperial Earth" and David Eddings, "The Tamuli".

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[rigorrogue]

What can be done? Science and lots of it. Most especially we may convince academics to concentrate on those issues that require solution soon, such as efficient tax law. I say this as a scientist (kind of) and a politician who will run in the next general election in Ireland. Mod me stupid.

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[caudron]

So what then can be done. . ?

Government waste is the price we pay for the common good.

Look, I agree that they waste much of our money, that they spend it on pet projects and line their own pockets, and that they are often unconcerned with our wishes. All that said, no one has figured out a better way to get roads and cops and a military and all the various infrastructure and services that are needed. Most often, when I hear someone complain about taxes it's just thinly veiled selfishness ("I don't wanna give away my money, so I'll complain that it's for the best that none of us do").

I appreciate the desire to keep your hard earned cash. Hell, my Inner Ferengi is constantly whining about the outflow of latinum as well, BUT my inner Altruist gently reminds me that the goods and services that the government provides---with the piece of the tax pie that isn't wasted---are invaluable to people. The government does a pretty good job (jokes about the current administration aside) of protecting the little guy in most cases. It makes sure my roads are in working condition, makes sure someone answers when I call 911, makes sure my kid is educated in a variety of subjects from geometry to literature to chemistry to drama to history---only some of which I could do without their help.

"Use Taxes" don't work because they don't shield minority needs from the callousness of the majority. "No Taxes" don't work becuase their simply are too many progrmas that MUST be funded for our country to operate efficiently. I'd love to keep all my cash as well. Offer me an alternative that doesn't run the country's infrastructure and services into nonexistence and I'll listen.

Til then, all we can do is vote people into office that we trust to do the right thing with our cash. If that proves impossible, then perhaps the problem isn't with the tax collector but with the vote collector. Think about it.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[foniksonik]

You could go get money from people who care... and take your government back. There is an election in 2 years. You have 2 years to get your shit together. Stop complaining, stop 'protesting' and start canvasing... go on a nationwide campaign, just like the politicians do. Set up a non-profit group.. call it something spiffy, like Americans for American Values... don't fall into the trap of only identifying with your core group of supporters, like say calling it the Independent Group or the Green Lovers or whatever...

So, go traveling... tell people what you're trying to do. Let them know how much you care. Convince them you are committed to your platform. Show them well thought out strategies for accomplishing your goals. Use real world numbers. Bring on board a bunch of like-minded experts in various fields of study... the environment, economics, political science, military history, aviation, energy etc. and convince them to write up proposals for improving their industries.

Now run for US Congress or Senate in your state... use the info you've acquired to wow your opponents and win over the electorate. Good you're now a powerful person with connections and new found opportunities.

Travel to other nations and gather international support for your US strategy. Gain access to foreign diplomats through their constituents. Draft agreements with foreign administrative bodies that you can bring back to the US as proof of international accord with your platform.

Do all this and then review it all while you're watching some idiot being elected President for his first term. Now compare what you have accomplished so far with what that guy did to get elected. Did you do enough? Probably not. That's okay, you've got 4 more years to work on it and you have a new standard to live up to and hopefully surpass.

Follow the new guy and his decisions and assign task groups from your newly formed election committee to monitor each relevant area of his policy. Ask the important questions and come up with resolutions that would improve upon the current administration. Send your resolutions to congress with the support of multiple experts in the field both domestic and foreign.

By this point you shouldn't need my roadmap for political success... and it's just a quick summary anyways... but you can see now the steps required to accomplish this task.

Have fun. This is the only way to do what you want done.

Re:Taxation is for the birds.

[Big_Breaker]

A few comments...

Federal expenditures are actually much more efficient than you suggest. The major components of our national budget are social security, medicare/medicade, interest on debt and military. The bureacracies that manage these programs are large but because the dollar amounts are so huge that even a bloated administration doesn't take away a large percentage. The majority of the spending either reaches the end "user" such as seniors in the form of checks or salary and jets for the military. Certainly we could administer the programs more efficiently but not enough to reduce spending 20%, let's say. Sadly you just can't reach that friction much below a certain lazy baseline.

That said, you CAN argue the utility or effectiveness of those expenditures. Perhaps some of the seniors getting checks don't really need the money. Maybe some of the soldiers drawing salary are redundant or unnecessary to our goals. The medical care offered for 95% off to seniors and the poor might create lousy incentives for healthy living.

The problem with the political machine is that decision making isn't designed to maximize the effectiveness of policies for US citizens (in a utilitarian sense). Instead it is designed to get politicians reelected, which is not the same thing. Getting reelected means playing party politics, getting $s from industry or special interests for publicity campaigns, and pandering to "swing" groups.

So what to we do to fix this?

Firstly we need transparency. Politicians are privy to our personal lives and wield power over our rights and possessions. In turn they should live their political lives in a glass house. Every meeting, phone call and conversionation should be recorded and made public. Their GPS coordinates should be logged every five minutes. Where is everyone sleeping at night? Near a golf course in Scotland... hmmm what's going on there!

If a conversation needs protection for national security, it should be held in escrow for five years and then released. If it turns out that national security wasn't at risk - censur or expulsion. It seems the government has almost all these rights to intrude on our lives, they should reciprocate by sharing this same information about themselves. They work for us, don't they? Don't most employers have surveillance of their employees? I know mine does, including all of my investments. I'm required to carry a mobile device that can also track my location. There is definitely precident.

Thus ends the secrecy needed for two faced, special intest pandering non-sense and outright bribery from the lobbyists. Anything a politician does and says will be available for public critisism.

So how do they fund election campaigns? There are only ~550 odd senators and representatives, a pres, VP and 50 governors. Giving each candidate an average of $2 million should be plenty in the age a cheap publishing and internet media. Publicly funding this amount would be cheap compared to the compromised decisions of industry BOUGHT pols. Spending from any other source would be prohibited and networks would be required to carry a few key debates during prime time. They do get OUR spectrum for free.

We can also fix swing vote pandering with preferential voting. Allow a general election of up to ten qualified, nominated individuals. Voters then rank them one through ten. The winner is the one with the highest MEDIAN ranking, rather than the highest percentage of #1 votes. For the house of represenatives we can eliminate districting by picking the top n candidates from a state-wide election where n = the number of representatives alloted the state. This eliminates so much voting manipulation it's silly. It allows for third parties or mavericks to compete on an even playing field with the powerful incumbants. This means responsive government, not business as usual.

Once we have politicians working for us instead of industry or special interest, we actually trust them to make good decisio

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[geekoid]

Are you new to consulting?
Clients like to have you there, and they perfer to pay a premium.

When I was consulting, at one point I doubled my rate, and got three times the number of clients. I double my rates becuase people kept asking me how much more to be on site 100%. Not wanting to be in site I just doubled my rate.
The funny thing is no client was further then a 30 minute drive away!

Legal immigrants too

[kt0157]

Resident aliens have to pay tax, but can't vote. They can even get drafted to fight for the country that doesn't give them the vote!

Democracy my butt!

K.

Could be *very* important for big business

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider a major corporation headquartered in New York state: IBM.

Let's suppose New York gets serious about this, and starts trying to extort NY income tax out of every IBM employee who makes a business trip to an IBM facility in New York State and works while there.

Suddenly, nobody in IBM outside NY will ever agree to visit any office in NY unless their pay is hiked to offset the tax hit. The company will be under great pressure to move all those offices to other states.

And IBM is into telecommuting in a big way.

Contractor!

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole taxation problem is one reason why it's great to be a contractor. As a contractor, my official place of business IS my home. If I'm working for a NY company, it doesn't matter. I'm a private company working in Washington, and a NY company is simply paying for my services. So NY can't collect a dime from the money they pay me.

NEW YORK COULD KISS MY ASS

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was working for EA, I was in California for 4 weeks working on-site. Do you think I paid California income tax? Hell no! I'm a Texan, and I don't pay state income tax; they can kiss my huge hairy cowboy ass if they think for one second that they're going to sqeeze a single cent out of my pocket.

Yet another argument against income-based taxation

[h2_plus_O]

Our tax system is already full of wierd rules; there's the 'Jock taxes', designed to capture the income of professional athletes who play [n] times a year in a given city. Why not telecommuters?

It's been noted above that the whole notion of incurring tax simply for having telecommuted 'into' a given place is problematic- sure, the city could mandate it and if they catch you, they can sure curtail your wages... but this simply points to an underlying issue: taxation based on income is already inefficient and hopelessly complex, enforcement isn't funded and probably wouldn't be cost-effective... and it's only getting more complicated as different taxing localities attempt to exploit the fact that income can be accrued remotely because work can be done the same way.

Remember, we live in the country where lawmakers figure it's reasonable to require a person to track where and how they earned all their money, and to use 50+k pages of code that the IRS can't get the same numbers out of more than once.
If I had my druthers, I'd like to see income-based taxation go away, and there's a reform proposal before congress pushing for just that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax /shameless plug

*Almost* a better way

[weston]

Business-to-business purchases for the production of goods and services are not taxed.

Doomed. At least, doomed to be unfair, and possibly doomed to be ineffective.

Not only will take on an essentially regressive character by excluding business expenditures, it will quite likely fail to close loopholes unless trusts and other non-personal legal entities are banned or closely watched... by something resembling the IRS, which the tax purports to abolish.

Throw in taxation on business consumption, and it may not take on the imaginary ideal economic efficiency that market fundamentalists leave their teeth under their pillow for, but it would actually work better in the world in which we live.

Re:*Almost* a better way

[DigiShaman]

Throw in taxation on business consumption, and it may not take on the imaginary ideal economic efficiency that market fundamentalists leave their teeth under their pillow for, but it would actually work better in the world in which we live.

It doesn't matter how you tax small business be it implicitly or explicitly. It all comes down to the bottom line. You see, at the end of the day, all the costs get passed on to the consumer.

Taxation through the IRS is a scam to hide the "truth". We're all getting fucked! I say pull the wool off the eyes of Americans. Stop these games of deceit and deception through the IRS. Make the tax system simple, streamlines, and fair. Maybe then the politicos in office will be held more accountable to how they spend in office with OUR money.

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[mabhatter654]

The first rule of posting in bunny slippers is not to talk about bunny slippers!

Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why the First Amendment is first. A free press can expose the cockroaches. There may always be cockroaches, but they can only build up to a certain degree if they are regularly exposed.

fairtax.org astroturf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the domain appears to have been registered by a marketing group, does that make fairtax.org astroturf?

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[JimBobJoe]

Businesses choose NYC for lots of reasons, some of which are ...and then again, a lot are leaving. New York is simply pricing itself out of the market.

A friend of mine works for Chase here in Columbus, noting that there are people in Manhattan making $200k/year doing what a person in Columbus does for $75k/year.

Unless those people are magically 2 1/2 times more productive, it'll be difficult to justify their current situation.

As an economist, I'm curious to see what happens. /used to live in new york

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you'll have a problem paying the 0% income taxes the state of Texas charges.

Move your company HQ

[grahamsz]

Why not move your company HQ on paper to a state with favorable tax laws, and have your NY employees telecomute. /oddly enough also in Colorado and doing work for a company in Tampa.

Simple - Incorporate

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple - Don't be an employee. Incorporate and invoice the place you are consulting to, then pay yourself dividends. As Ivana Trump put it: Tax is for the little people...

Re:Simple - Incorporate

[Big_Breaker]

Leona Helmsley said that by the way, not Ivana. That statement helped send her to prison for tax evasion.

Re:Simple - Incorporate

[MxTxL]

Bad advice, dividends are paid out of the corporate coffers after taxes have been assessed on income. After the dividend is paid out (to you since you are the sole shareholder) you will have to pay taxes on your own personal income. AKA double taxes.

Better is to pay yourself a wage (which is pretax expense to the company) and only pay the taxes on your personal earnings.

Don't get the feds involved if possible...

[SonicSpike]

I would say that given our current system and the methods of functionality, leaving the federal government OUT of this would probably be a wise choice.

Although I think a case could be made for the fed having jurisdiction here (true interstate-commerce), they usually complicate any situation they get involved in. The legislation would probably have soo many loopholes and special interest clauses that it would cause more harm than fixes.

My advice is for the states (or the people at least) to work on this without the help of the federal government. The less of a hand they have in things, the better.

I doubt this will end up as a good thing

[jjn1056]

Although I sympathize with telecommuters (I have state residence in NYC, but currently work in Beijing for a client in Atlanta) I doubt this law will end up helping us much. NY goes after a lot of telecommuters because a lot of companys use remote offices as a way to get around paying tax, not because they want to go after the 'little guy on a terminal in Michigan'. The same reasoning applies to people working in NYC but living in NJ or elsewhere, we ask them to pay NYC tax because the City is providing all the infrastructure necessary to help them become successful. It's just not fair for someone to make money because of all the effort and local tax dollars spent to make NYC a good place to do business and not contribute to that effort.

I hear you when you say that why should I pay if I don't live there or if I don't go there to an office. But your clients do live there or work there and they are there because of the huge investment in tax dollars to make NYC a place for you to find clients. Otherwise you'd just find local clients. So it's reasonable to ask for you to pitch into that community effort. I think we just need to come up with a better way to measure that 'pitch in' amount and make sure it's directly tied to your direct benefit and not to pork projects in upstate NY that primarily benefit politicians trying to hold on to thier positions.

My feeling is that this is just another wedge issue, like the marriage penalty tax, that certain people in Washington will use to push through more tax cuts for the wealthy or for corporations. We will get our commuter tax 'relief' but 100 times more in tax breaks to people with enough already will be attached to it.

Personally I think all taxes are too high, but I am wary of people in washington with an agenda riding my annoyance to push through things I am not in favor of.

Point - Counterpoint

[Fantastic Lad]

So what then can be done. . ?

(Pardon me while I play point/counter-point with myself)

Are you suggesting violence? Well, that's stupid. It's a good way to create a lot of misery and chaos. --In particular, it's a good way to give the administration an excuse to let loose with its big guns and really enact a lock-down. Sorry, but you don't have enough fire-power to contest the government. Have you not read your Machiavelli? He described the very tactic; essentially, political judo with guns. You don't want to go there.

No, the way to go is to fight ignorance. If everybody, including the dupes in the police force and armed forces who are doing the Dark Side's bidding, (and I'm willing to bet it's only some of them), if those guys woke up, then who would remain to heil Bush?

Fight ignorance. If you can wake people up, then you can start to solve things; all the raw workings of the solution are built right into the American system. It just takes awareness and will to make things change.

Enlightened people need not be abused.

-FL

Re:Point - Counterpoint

[Bios_Hakr]

Have several hundred thousand caring people go to DC and sit in front of the White House till they change.

Offshore...

[m0rphm0nkey]

Not that I don't enjoy a good bill reading but, do those of you who've perused this have any idea how this will affect offshoring? I assume it would increase the profit margin of those NY businesses that use it to do business in NY.

m

Re:Why Does Anyone Base Their Company In New York?

[m0rphm0nkey]

Dear Moderators,

Please delete the utter shitbag F_Scentura's repugnant account. Hopefully the moderators can GIT R DUNN in this instance.

m

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This legislation is aimed to help average workers. There's little benefit for big business or legislators. It will never pass.

There's little benefit for big business

That's really taking the comment out of it's context don't you think? The GP was saying that the legislation has little benefit for big business, not that there any benefit working from home in your bunny slippers.

Error in summary

[Anonymous Coward]

This often results in a double tax when the telecommuter's home state expects tax on the income the telecommuter earns at home.

This is incorrect. It does not result in double tax. You should hire a tax professional if you're paying more taxes than being the resident of a single state.

I pay taxes in three states, but no state gets 100%. My total tax bill is no more than if I owed just one of those states. I just don't get to pick the states that I pay. If you're paying more, hire a GOOD tax guy!!!

State Tax Refund Tax

[wyatt27]

You may be misreading your weekly pay stub.

The state tax refund is treated as "additional" income because it wasn't taxed to begin with. It's withheld from your net paycheck and, therefore, not taxed as income at that time. When you get it back via refund, it goes back in the "taxable income" column and is then taxed - after the fact.

The feds do the same thing, in case you haven't noticed. You're supposed to declare any state tax refunds on your federal return.

In all cases, the one-year-free-loan is accurate, though. And you can adjust your W-4 to deal with that (declare more 'dependents'). Instead of overpaying, just resign yourself to paying at the end of the year, but in which case you get to keep more of your earnings.

Re:State Tax Refund Tax

[EllisDees]

>The state tax refund is treated as "additional" income because it wasn't taxed to begin with.

Whaaaa...

If you make X amount of dollars, and have Y withheld, your taxes are still computed based on X, not X-Y.

>It's withheld from your net paycheck and, therefore, not taxed as income at that time.

Withholding for taxes isn't like withholding for a 401k.

Any state that does this is basically robbing you. You *are* being taxed on the exact same money twice, as the next year your income would be computed as X + (Y - your actual tax bill) when you've already paid taxes on Y.

Re:State Tax Refund Tax

[fprintf]

I am not sure about your state, but in my state, Connecticut, the taxes you pay are based on your adjusted net income, which excludes any deductions, money paid for healthcare, and federal taxes. They are not based on gross income, the X in your example.

So when you overpay your taxes in one year, which comes out of pretax money, you are receiving a refund of pre-tax money. You must then adjust your income up in the following year for that pre-state tax refund.

All in all, it adds up to very little. I paid several hundred in state taxes, and received a decent size refund last year, which equaled maybe $15 in extra tax I needed to pay this year. Of course they made it easy for me by "allowing" me to deduct that $15 from the refund I was expecting to receive.

It is a convoluted system invented by tax accountants and lawyers, but it makes perfect sense to me. It'd be better if they didn't tax me in the first place.

Re:State Tax Refund Tax

[John Fulmer]

The state tax refund is treated as "additional" income because it wasn't taxed to begin with. It's withheld from your net paycheck and, therefore, not taxed as income at that time. When you get it back via refund, it goes back in the "taxable income" column and is then taxed - after the fact.

You are taxed on adjusted gross salary (in the state that does it to me), minus non-taxable items like 401k and health insurance. Adjusted gross on my check includes the witholding.

As a test, my pretax section of my W2 + the taxable salary in my W2 = Total Gross Salary. State and federal taxes are not in the pre-tax line item.

Not exactly accurate

[billscott122]

If I remember correctly, I was allowed to deduct form my NY State taxes any taxes I had to pay to another taxing jurisdiction, so that I DID NOT PAY TAXES TWICE on the same income.

IRRELEVANT!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should a NY company hire some hick, when they can outsource the job to another country for 1/5 the price? Sound like passing this legislation is worthless, since all the jobs will eventually go overseas.

Full faith & credit

[The Conductor]

No need for the commerce clause, this is more directly an expression of Article 4, Section 1

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

It is naturally a federal power to prescribe under which state's jurisdiction income is earned. Of course they could use the commerce clause anyway, since under current precedent the commerce clause authorizes just about anything.

Where your brain is...

[The Conductor]

Not quite so simple...should airline employees and truck drivers file 48 state tax returns every year? I spent 7 weeks last year in China, but I don't get a pro-rated tax.

Having said all that, NY truly is notorious for taxing income based on the slimmest legal nexus. California is bad about taxing overseas earnings of multinational corporations. US ex-patriates have a hard time escaping federal income tax (compared to Europeans at least...but that may be more a result of Europe's multi-state political landscape, making the ex-patriate situation more common & therefore more logically addressed). Income tax and cross-border commuting are too new for common-law principles to have been worked out for these situations.

Bi-lateral agreements

[The Conductor]

Most of the states I've filed in (they would all be eastern/midwest states) seem to have bilateral agreemtments with bordering states. It didn't help me when I earned income in two non-bordering states; the usual solution there was to compute your tax and then pro-rate for the fraction earned in each state, but I don't remember these rules always being consistent. The gov't of NY has probably decided that they would lose out on these agreements (though perhaps wrongly in the long term...witness the flight of financial firms to NJ & New England).

Man, you think regular income tax is bad, try filing 3 or 4 state returns, where the rules for filing and accounting for which income goes where (or whether you have to file or not) are vague. Arrgh!

Re:It'll never pass. Huh?

[cayenne8]

"Are you new to consulting? Clients like to have you there, and they perfer to pay a premium."

Very interesting. Could you elaborate more on what type consulting you do...what area of the country? Are you completely indie...or work for a consulting firm?