Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I'm Stella Commute, and I Approve This Sentiment

From U.S. News and World Report*, a fine blog post advocating that all political parties get behind supporting telecommuting through tax breaks for companies that promote telecommuting to their employees.

The Federal government is already doing a lot to promote telecommuting -- primarily because they are headquartered in one of the great traffic hells of the world, Washington, DC. But pushing telecommuting hard to places outside the Beltway is a great thing to do.

Oh, and work on passing the Telecommuting Tax Fairness Act, too, so that telecommuters aren't wantonly taxed by every state that might somehow lay claim to their incomes.

* Were there ever two separate magazines, U.S. News, and another publication World Report, that combined to become U.S. News and World Report, or is it just a terrible terrible publication name? Also, I've discovered the secret identity of one of my favorite bloggers, Evil HR Lady -- it's the person who wrote the post I've linked to here. Cool.

2 comments:

Breanne said...

LOL at the USN&WR name. nice.

Did you just out EHRL?

I didn't realize multiple states are laying claim to telecommuter's income tax. Do you have suggestions about tax breaks for telecommuters? I've heard there are tons, but that you really need to work with a good tax person to find all of them.

As a fellow work-from-home-er, I am trying to learn as much as possible about the tax rules of working from home. Apparently some portion of your house payment/house improvements can be used as deductions. Who knew?

Stella Commute said...

EHRL outed herself -- I don't imagine that's a surveillance photo taken from across the street at the top of the article, and I surely hope that she knows they wrote that she writes EHRL at the bottom of her piece. Yikes, if she doesn't, I hope she sees this!

Yah, NYS really goes after the payroll taxes -- I've blogged about it because I work there but I live elsewhere. The federal tax business (claiming your home office expenses as a deduction) has a lot of rules and red flags that it can raise for auditors. I tried it one year, and just gave up because I became afraid of a soul-sucking audit. YMMV.