Musk, Ramaswamy tell Trump to end "the Covid-era privilege of staying home"
The idea could affect over 1 million federal workers who are eligible for remote work.
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I liked the meme posted a month ago...
"Great. I get to delete my work email and collaboration apps from my phone"
Musk made a rant last year interview that "It is immoral for you to work from home if people building your car, or delivering your food cannot". As an employer, you have the option to pay more for extra expenses/time involved in coming to office if that is super important to you.
I'm not going to take lessons in morality from Mr. I-Promote-Nazis-On-My-Website
I don't think we should ever listen to moral opinions from ANYONE who has dedicated their lives to skimming as much money as possible off other people's hard work, and not just a few people but millions and millions. They are whatever the capitalist, economic version of a serial killer is.
Nah, I don't agree with paying people more to come into the office. Working at home has costs for me that the company doesn't compensate me for, plus it saves the company money in infrastructure and resources. If you get paid more to come into the office, I want to be paid more for my electricity, plus the desk and chair and monitor and the space in my house for them.
The average commute commutes 30 minutes each way, traveling an average of 15 miles, for a total time cost of 250 hours for a job wherein you are paid for 2080 hours of work.
The cost per vehicle mile is now about $0.72 including all costs. The average commuter traveling 15 miles one way will burn $5,400 commuting. Man then there is the cost of childcare. For instance maybe your kid gets home at 4P and you get off at 5P. If you commute you'll be back and 5:30 and you have to find a solution. One solution is one partner arrange to be off but that has its own cost. If you want to itemize the cost of having someone pick up and watch your kid its about $15-20 an hour 180 days * 2 hours or so. So up to $7000. This is not even counting the times that kids have the day off from school but mom and dad don't or times a kid is sick.
That is to say you commit 12% more unpaid work + commuting costs for the privilege of being there in person. If the median worker earns about 60,000 they are incurring as much as $20,000 in costs in both time, transportation, and childcare.
Compare that to the cost of running the company laptop 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year is about $10. A home office can be had for $1000 ever. As far as the space I have one which I've worked out of in my tiny studio come on man. Are you really shocked that you have to pay someone more to come in?
Hell we haven't even talked about the cost of living in the expensive places companies like to situate themselves vs the surrounding oft cheaper areas!
https://www.care.com/c/after-school-transportation-for-kids-cost/ https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Transportation-Economic-Trends-Transportation-Spen/bzt6-t8cd/ https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-travel-time-to-work-rises.html
There is also expense/time of hygiene, laundry, drycleaning, restaurant lunch/coffees/snacks
Before Trump’s tax “cuts” you could deduct home office expenses from your income on your taxes. Any improvements or utilities just for the office area were 100% deductible, and a certain percentage of household expenses based on the square footage of your home and office.
Specifically, you don't qualify for those cuts if you're a W2 employee. You can if you're a 1040. Because of the way Covid worked out, that ended up meaning a whole lot of people got chopped off from a tax cut they otherwise would have had.
I had been working from home before Covid as a W2. The credit wasn't big; it amounted to a few hundred bucks for the year. But it's not nothing, and I always remember it when MAGA says Trump cut your taxes.
I usually got a couple thousand in deductions. But I included 10% of all my housing expenses including my mortgage, not just utilities. Then again I had oil heat with an electric baseboard in a leaky house for most of that so my heating bills were astronomical.
I wonder how all the folks working from home getting a fat tax deduction would have changed history.
I mean, coming into the office also has additional costs associated. Fuel, mileage, commute time, etc.
