Deutsche Bank's (DB) new research suggests that remote workers should be taxed for the "privilege" of working from home!
Why should remote workers be taxed?
According to DB,
- Those who work from home are getting a free ride. They are contributing less to the infrastructure of the economy while still receiving its benefits.
- WFH = savings in terms of travel, lunch, laundry etc. Plus intangible benefits of greater job security, convenience, flexibility, additional safety.
- So even if there's a 5% "privilege" tax, you would be no worse off than if you had chosen to go into the office.
You are surely joking, DB
The suggestion is so outlandish that it isn't even worth talking about, but humour me.
- Remote workers pay extra for setting up home office, bills for electricity, heater, co-working pass etc.
- Companies save huge costs on office rent, internet & electricity bills among many other things.
So if anyone is paying a "privilege" tax, it should be the employer. However, that would mean discouraging companies from going remote.
How about incentivising companies for environment-friendly behaviour?
Surprisingly, DB doesn't talk about the positive impact on the climate due to remote work at scale. If we assume huge number of people indeed start working remotely, shouldn't the state incentivise (rather than tax) companies for being environment-friendly?
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Latest comments (40)
I know that for the sake of argument, the bank claims that working from home brings financial benefits through "direct financial savings" on expenses such as commuting, clothing and lunches, and indirect savings from things like reduced communication at work and laundry. These benefits "generally outweigh" the costs of working from home (such as the stress of combining work and kids at home or the imperfect setup of a home office), indicating most people who say they will continue working from home at least part-time after a pandemic as evidence. To that end, the bank proposes a 5% tax on employers for every employee who chooses to work from home all the time, stating that companies may even be better off despite the tax, given the potential savings on office downsizing and general maintenance. Â Out of the whole situation, there is one joy for me I have started using a platform that will help you save on taxes and create paystubcreator.net/, I spend less than ten dollars on it, and it is done in seconds. Maybe it can help you too.
I don't get this part of the argument at all. I'd still be paying federal and state taxes.
I pay a lot of money to live close to work - literally across the street. Working from home doesn't save me any money: It costs me more (electricity for the most part, and this place has electric heating and "winter is coming"). I'm not saving on commuting and the likes since I didn't have those expenses before (though "location location location" means that I paid more for my place (mortgage + property taxes) than someone living much further away.
So that's a big fat NOPE from me.
It pissed me off as well.
If you work from home, you still go to lunch (except pandemic time), but to a local restaurant. It means that the folks who live in the area also does not need to commute because they can sell their expertise right where they live.
As a ripple effect smaller towns will see more investment, and bigger cities might see actual affordable rent and housing prices.
And then there is the green factor to it: less commute less energy wasted. If we want to tax anyone it's the people who roam in huge SUVs: a ton of steel and machinery moves around one 100 kg dude back and forth twice a day.
Great point... This differs form country to country. In Germany you can deduct home office expenses (up to 1.250€ per year under certain conditions). In Italy, this is not possible.
So I gladly pay a home office tax, if I can deduct home office expenses. For me, this would translate to: Spend money in restaurants, because otherwise you get taxed.
The sad thing is, that IMHO that probably would only increase bureaucracy as a result.
Please note that DB actually suggested that the tax should be paid by employers, not employees. Following AlJazeera:
"The tax itself would be paid by employers if they do not provide a worker with a permanent desk (see ya’ later, hot desking)."
Not judging whether this idea does make sense or not, if you calculate the cost of the rental space and utilities, this tax might be comparable to company's savings due to remote work.
That's only half of it. Their argument is if your employer does provide you an office desk and you instead choose to work remotely, you are the one who has to pay the tax.
This would encourage employers to find ways to make the office a more hostile environment with many tiny desks crammed together small areas just for the sake of inducing people to work from home so they can save money. As long as the employer can manage to keep a few desks empty because people to work from home, they can both hold the costs of maintaining the workplace down a lot by inducing people to work from home and push the tax payments for remote work off on the employees, at the same time.
Most social engineering ideas like this crap from DB is developed with gross willfull ignorance of negative side effects.
When I read that I felt so enraged, what about the amount of money the employer saves by having the employees at home? No office space, no internet, electricity, parking space, snacks, etc.
Not to mention that, if efficiently managed, the employee is more productive than working in an office.
If anything, they should encourage more WFH instead of trying to tax it.
Your never going to see a bank advocating for the taxation of the corporate class. Banks will always defer taxation to the working class or suggest government incentives (which are payed by taxes disproportionately contributed by the working class).
We live in a world exclusively directed by short term gains and corporate profit and, again, taxation of the corporate class makes no sense from that perspective.
Yeah, as much good as economic freedom gives, we can't ignore the excesses or neglect to correct them.
These buzz-words of "privileged groups" and "exploited groups" strike me as characteristic of the new Marxists.
Why do so many popular issues get shoe-horned into this oppressor-oppressed class conflict ideology? It's flawed, because it doesn't account for individual agency, perhaps by design.
The logic is that if you have a privilege, you should have a tax, right? Am I missing something?
A privilege tax for using free software, because those with "FOSS-Privilege" don't contribute nearly as many billions of dollars back to the Operating System subfield of the software development industry?
A Privilege Tax for people who move closer to their work so they only have to walk?
A Privilege Tax for male privilege, or high-functioning autism privilege?
A Privilege Tax for those with a high IQ?
These things are un-earned, but the benefits accorded by them do take a modicum of effort to preserve and seize.
Privilege ==> Punishment is the calculus of the likes of Harrison Bergeron. It's a quick read, and Vonnegut's as good an author as any.
> Hominem unius libri timeo.
I really didn't understand the "economic infrastructure" argument and I'm not sure they did, either, as they didn't bother to elaborate in the article. I have spent a lot more online shopping in the last 8 months than I probably have in the last 8 years. My B&M spending has shifted to digital, but hasn't everyone's? Is "infrastructure" only thought of in physical terms?
Not to mention, workplace buildings are a large overhead cost for a business. So not sure how the employee is the one seeing the largest benefits from remote work?
I don't think it's about benefit. It's about people with full salaries being able to work like nothing is happening from home contributing more so people that HAVE TO work outside their homes get more. Thing you use to write this uses AP as well as cables. Those things have to be maintained physically, there needs to be a physical server to store this comment, and factory to produce those chips physically. So it's not about benefit it's about least amount of thank you we can express to such people maintaining it. I'm just looking at how a lot of people started defending their salaries but are shopping like insane. Couldn't "you" just not buy thing you actually don't need and spare a bit for things that you depend on directly to stay at home ("you" as in people complaining about taxes and buying stuff, not you specifically)?
I don't fully understand how could DB exploit this or so but I know there might be some bad stuff that could potentially happen. On the other hand the idea of paying a bit more taxes to say thanks to the ones keeping the infrastructure and modern lifestyle alive is not too much for me. Most of the world is not US, a lot of countries actually tax the rich even more than non wealthy citizens so it's not exactly "working class suffers only" scenario.
I don't disagree with the sentiment. I have been very privileged in my industry during COVID and did not experience any disruptions to life.
I have lived in six different states in the US, some were high-tax some and low-tax. The problem is more tax $ does not equal better outcomes. In fact some of the best states I've lived in were very low on taxes (i.e. no personal income or sales tax) but ran very efficient and honest governments - Oregon for example has no sales tax and actually runs their budget at a surplus and sends taxpayers additional refunds every year. Other states have very high levels of corruption - and VERY high taxes. If I'm going to pay 5% I would rather have it go directly to a person's rent than just siphoned into yet another black hole.
I agree with that, however as I said I understand they may be some issues on how to handle it without going into "balck hole" but I trust that Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and such have less corruption and can be trusted moving money to it's actual destination. Not to get too much into it I'm saying that depends on the trust issue with the country as I had with mine which is why I moved here in the first place. However I was pointing out that a lot of people that were loud in the beginning were actually complaining about getting less money even though they might have enough but they just don't want to help anyone. On different comment I was targeting "home office setup" as something that can also be regulated where if you can work from home but don't have equipment employer must allow you to take home such equipment. So in all basic underlying idea was not so bad but got really criticised.
The underlying idea used to justify this is not to "say thanks to the ones keeping the infrastructure and modern lifestyle alive is not too much for me." I got no problem with that, I guess. Like, maybe temporary boosted Medicare access for "First responders" and so-called "essential" workers? IDK. The justification and the ideas proposed would look a lot different if the rationale was something more like, ""say thanks to the ones keeping the infrastructure and modern lifestyle alive" and less like the usual Critical Theory.
What Deutsche Bank's proposed is literally called a "Privilege Tax." What does "Privilege" mean, in that case? Does it mean the underlying idea is that those with a "Privilege" (with a capital "P") are oppressing, rather than helping, those without?