Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[brokencycle]

How much risk is there for Google? I mean, if I work remotely and don't tell them I'm in another state, how would they know? Are they obligated to track how much time each employee is working from each state? How would they do that?

 

[Texasmade]

How much risk is there for Google? I mean, if I work remotely and don't tell them I'm in another state, how would they know? Are they obligated to track how much time each employee is working from each state? How would they do that?

That's what I don't get. If I choose to log in from another state that's normally not on m employer to track. If my employer sends me to another state to do work that's different. There were several instances where I'd login from my laptop in NYC while I was on vacation but my work never did anything for state tax compliance.

My old accounting consulting days were different where my firm would send me out to a client site to work out of state.

 

[otc]

The first part seems like a question that maybe UnFacconable can answer, because I have no idea. If the company knows their workers are likely not working from the withholding jurisdiction (like...they have an official policy allowing them to work elsewhere for 4 weeks), they can probably get in trouble pretty quick vs like...one guy who does a day or two of work during his beach vacation.

Tracking it is solvable though...but maybe a pain.

Since I've always worked in environments where time is billable to specific clients or projects, there has always been infrastructure to track it. I believe I mentioned that my current parent company has a lot more "travelling consultant" type people, so the whole HR system is set up to accommodate it. The time entry software we use already has every different possible taxation jurisdiction as a choice in a dropdown menu.

And I know some tech companies do loose time tracking/project accounting for at least some of their employees--maybe only at the 1-hour resolution, but enough to track how much of a developers time is being spent fixing bugs in the legacy system vs developing new product X.

But if you are an exempt salaried worker with no history of tracking your time, I agree that it seems like a big ask to suddenly keep a log (and for the company to have to invest in a system to track it). Still, you could probably get away with a policy where you automatically assume all work is done in the home jurisdiction unless an employee reports otherwise. So you only have to keep track when actively travelling.

Someone like Google could certainly engineer a tracking system too--if you log in from the LAN, you're in the office. If you join the VPN from your home IP, you're home. If you connect from an unrecognized location, you get asked to fill in a jurisdiction. But that's out of reach for most non-tech companies unless they can outsource it to someone else (business idea?)

 

[Piobaire]

I think it's one of those situation where as an employer, if you know something is happening, you can't just look the other way. There are going to be trackable events like worker comp claims.

 

[Texasmade]

The first part seems like a question that maybe UnFacconable can answer, because I have no idea. If the company knows their workers are likely not working from the withholding jurisdiction (like...they have an official policy allowing them to work elsewhere for 4 weeks), they can probably get in trouble pretty quick vs like...one guy who does a day or two of work during his beach vacation.

Tracking it is solvable though...but maybe a pain.

Since I've always worked in environments where time is billable to specific clients or projects, there has always been infrastructure to track it. I believe I mentioned that my current parent company has a lot more "travelling consultant" type people, so the whole HR system is set up to accommodate it. The time entry software we use already has every different possible taxation jurisdiction as a choice in a dropdown menu.

And I know some tech companies do loose time tracking/project accounting for at least some of their employees--maybe only at the 1-hour resolution, but enough to track how much of a developers time is being spent fixing bugs in the legacy system vs developing new product X.

But if you are an exempt salaried worker with no history of tracking your time, I agree that it seems like a big ask to suddenly keep a log (and for the company to have to invest in a system to track it). Still, you could probably get away with a policy where you automatically assume all work is done in the home jurisdiction unless an employee reports otherwise. So you only have to keep track when actively travelling.

Someone like Google could certainly engineer a tracking system too--if you log in from the LAN, you're in the office. If you join the VPN from your home IP, you're home. If you connect from an unrecognized location, you get asked to fill in a jurisdiction. But that's out of reach for most non-tech companies unless they can outsource it to someone else (business idea?)

At my current job, I'm a salary exempt that doesn't track any time since nothing is getting billed back to the customer. My old job required me to track time and jurisdiction. If I submitted an expense report for travel, my tracked time needed to match up with my expense report. If not, the report would get flagged for questioning.

 

[otc]

On the flip side...we switched to a new version of our time entry software...I had high hopes that it would be an improvement over the like 20-year old application-version we'd been using up until now. Same company, but its a web-based solution which means you can enter time from any browser and not have to go through the cumbersome process of running a virtualized application through our parent company's servers.

Nope. It's worse, at least for my use case. It is clunky, it insists on stupid crap like manually clicking the spell check button before submitting an entry, it doesn't have a nice tab/arrow-key friendly spreadsheet view of a week's worth of time...and instead of feeling like a snappy web 2.0 app, it feels just as slow as or slower than the old application.

So that's why I'm posting here as I attempt to finish entering my April time that I've been procrastinating on.

Going forward, I think I'm going to ask for an assistant to start entering my time--I've always thought it was silly when people did that (you still have to do the hard part of actually keeping track of the time), but this new software has made it so painful that I am willing to accept the waste that is me entering the time once into a spreadsheet and then someone else transcribing those numbers into the time entry system.

 

[usctrojans31]

How much risk is there for Google? I mean, if I work remotely and don't tell them I'm in another state, how would they know? Are they obligated to track how much time each employee is working from each state? How would they do that?

Duh. The COVID vaccine already has microchips in it.

 

[venividivicibj]

How much risk is there for Google? I mean, if I work remotely and don't tell them I'm in another state, how would they know? Are they obligated to track how much time each employee is working from each state? How would they do that?

I know quite a few people at my company who have worked from other states (and countries) during the pandemic without letting their manager/directors know. I don’t care if one of my reports is working from Canada or Arizona as long as they do their work. One of our HR contacts rented out a beach house in Mexico and was working from there for a month.

 

[Piobaire]

Duh. The COVID vaccine already has microchips in it.

Yeah but now there's the issue of determining who got control of a given, individual chip: Bill or Melinda?

 

[chickenfark]

On the flip side...we switched to a new version of our time entry software...I had high hopes that it would be an improvement over the like 20-year old application-version we'd been using up until now. Same company, but its a web-based solution which means you can enter time from any browser and not have to go through the cumbersome process of running a virtualized application through our parent company's servers.

Nope. It's worse, at least for my use case. It is clunky, it insists on stupid crap like manually clicking the spell check button before submitting an entry, it doesn't have a nice tab/arrow-key friendly spreadsheet view of a week's worth of time...and instead of feeling like a snappy web 2.0 app, it feels just as slow as or slower than the old application.

So that's why I'm posting here as I attempt to finish entering my April time that I've been procrastinating on.

Going forward, I think I'm going to ask for an assistant to start entering my time--I've always thought it was silly when people did that (you still have to do the hard part of actually keeping track of the time), but this new software has made it so painful that I am willing to accept the waste that is me entering the time once into a spreadsheet and then someone else transcribing those numbers into the time entry system.

Pretty bonkers to me how crummy time tracking software can be. At my last job where I had to track time, we switched to Oracle and it was TERRIBLE. No tabbing, no autofill, no copying, laggy, and just took forever. I solved the problem by switching to a non-billable job. Hard pass at consulting gigs for me cause I absolutely loathe everything about timesheets.

 

[HRoi]

There’s a corporate tax implication along with the personal income tax implication for employees. If you unwittingly employ people who do business out of a certain state, that state could levy tax on you for doing business in that state.

for us, people of a certain seniority were recently (2y ago) asked to start tracking our time spent working out of state, using the same time tracking software we always used, and via the honor system. I figure someone got wind that something was about to go down and decided we best be prepared

 

[otc]

One of our HR contacts rented out a beach house in Mexico and was working from there for a month.

The problem there is that...they were almost certainly there on a tourist visa. You can't cross into other countries freely like other states.

Maybe Mexico doesn't have an issue with temporary work (US based work, paid to a US bank account) being done while on a touris visa...they do like those tourist $$$.

But that could potentially raise pretty big issues for both the employee and the employer in ways that will vary by country. Employee could essentially be an undocumented worker...and employer could be on the hook for local regulations. What if you are in a European country where you are entitled to extra days of vacation or certain benefits? Are you suddenly establishing a tax nexus in the country for your employer?

 

[venividivicibj]

The problem there is that...they were almost certainly there on a tourist visa. You can't cross into other countries freely like other states.

Maybe Mexico doesn't have an issue with temporary work (US based work, paid to a US bank account) being done while on a touris visa...they do like those tourist $$$.

But that could potentially raise pretty big issues for both the employee and the employer in ways that will vary by country. Employee could essentially be an undocumented worker...and employer could be on the hook for local regulations. What if you are in a European country where you are entitled to extra days of vacation or certain benefits? Are you suddenly establishing a tax nexus in the country for your employer?

Ngl, that sounds stupid and too much work.

 

[Omega Male]

Another big tech company closes SF offices, will have no HQ

The company will have no headquarters, and no office in San Francisco.

www.sfgate.com

Going remote, or at least "location agnostic", for good.

 

[UnFacconable]

The first part seems like a question that maybe UnFacconable can answer, because I have no idea.

The correct answer is that companies have a withholding obligation whether they are aware of it or not so they need to design compliance regimes taking into account local requirements. As I noted previously, this is a separate issue from whether or not the individual workers have state and local tax obligations.

My sense is that this is a competitive advantage for Google because they have the scale to be compliant everywhere. Small companies can ignore the problem but for midsize companies it can create quite a headache. This gives Google an actionable advantage vs up and coming unicorns with not fully scaled HR/legal teams. I'm fairly certain Google will require its employees to notify their manager and HR when they are working remotely (not WFH but working from another jurisdiction). Otherwise, they won't be able to meet their compliance obligations.

For what it's worth, I have a friend who worked years ago at several large international law firms (with phenomenal tax practices) and often spent more than 2 weeks per year working in NYC - including a full month during his summer internship and never once had any income reported in NY until he was a partner at which point he had to fill out non-resident state tax returns in several states where his firms earned income. Maybe that's changed in recent years, but I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't. You would think law firms are great on compliance but it turns out that they are often better at giving other people advice than managing their own obligations.

On the flip side...we switched to a new version of our time entry software...I had high hopes that it would be an improvement over the like 20-year old application-version we'd been using up until now. Same company, but its a web-based solution which means you can enter time from any browser and not have to go through the cumbersome process of running a virtualized application through our parent company's servers.

Nope. It's worse, at least for my use case.

I am not surprised to hear that Kronos is still terrible to use.