3 ms·

Be careful to clear this with your company first. It can become a tax nightmare and could lead to termination if you’re working at a large organization that doe

by mlac 5y ago

Be careful to clear this with your company first. It can become a tax nightmare and could lead to termination if you’re working at a large organization that doesn’t have a presence where you want to work.

ghaff 5y ago
Even within the US, you can't legally just have a nominal postal address somewhere and then live wherever you want. States want their money. A friend of mine was telling me their company is going to start auditing business travel records to make sure that appropriate tax filings are made. If you're not filing expense reports, will a company "know"? Possibly not. But it seems pretty precarious to expose yourself and the company at risk this way.
- mlac 5y ago
  They will know through VPN logs - security groups look for anomalous login activity and will want to know why you’re logging in from Detroit when your work location says San Jose. It also puts your manager at risk to do it - if you tell them, then they know it’s happening and have to do something about it.
  - lizknope 5y ago
    I guess you need a VPN for your VPN
  - ghaff 5y ago
    People log in from all over the place because of business travel. I doubt that many companies are aggressively data mining where employees are located. The second point is more significant. Even with almost 100% remote work it's hard to systematically hide where you are from everyone--especially if you do any business travel or expense reimbursement or are in a materially different timezone or climate.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  It's true that things are difficult if you don't have primary residency somewhere, but I'm unaware of any obligation to actually stay at the primary residence, so long as you're not de facto residing somewhere else and avoiding legal residency there for tax evasion purposes. Like, you can have a primary residence in NY state, and travel all year long, and so long as you're not actually spending >6 months at a specific residence in another state, and are still paying your NY and federal taxes, I don't think there's any problem. Where things get sketchy is if you're trying to claim NY is your primary residence while living in CA for 9 months of the year. I'm not a lawyer though. What I'm more familiar with is overseas residency and federal taxes. There are benefits to establishing legal residency outside the US, if you really do live and work outside the US. But then you have to be able to prove it to the IRS. If you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. But if you spend more than 33 days per year in the US, the burden of proof for establishing a bona fide foreign residency are higher[1]. Edit: update since I can't nest any more replies (to @dragonwriter) below: I sorta changed topics; my paragraph above about foreign residency is only relevant if you're earning foreign income. If you're a US citizen working for a US company, you're not getting away from taxes that way. But you can still save yourself from some personal obligation by setting up a company. [1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion-bona-fide-residence-test https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. That’s...not true. State income tax is usually due on dollars earned in the state — it used to be usually the union of (dollars earned by residents) and (dollars earned by work in the state) but a 2015 federal court decision required it to be one or the other, and AFAIK every state with an income tax has chosen the latter over the former because, basically, resident citizens vote in the state while citizens resident in other states, the most common nonresident citizen workers, don’t. So, a bona fide overseas residence doesn't have any effect on state income tax liability.
  - 5y ago

by mlac 5y ago

ghaff 5y ago

Even within the US, you can't legally just have a nominal postal address somewhere and then live wherever you want. States want their money. A friend of mine was telling me their company is going to start auditing business travel records to make sure that appropriate tax filings are made. If you're not filing expense reports, will a company "know"? Possibly not. But it seems pretty precarious to expose yourself and the company at risk this way.

mlac 5y ago
They will know through VPN logs - security groups look for anomalous login activity and will want to know why you’re logging in from Detroit when your work location says San Jose. It also puts your manager at risk to do it - if you tell them, then they know it’s happening and have to do something about it.
- lizknope 5y ago
  I guess you need a VPN for your VPN
- ghaff 5y ago
  People log in from all over the place because of business travel. I doubt that many companies are aggressively data mining where employees are located. The second point is more significant. Even with almost 100% remote work it's hard to systematically hide where you are from everyone--especially if you do any business travel or expense reimbursement or are in a materially different timezone or climate.
caymanjim 5y ago
It's true that things are difficult if you don't have primary residency somewhere, but I'm unaware of any obligation to actually stay at the primary residence, so long as you're not de facto residing somewhere else and avoiding legal residency there for tax evasion purposes. Like, you can have a primary residence in NY state, and travel all year long, and so long as you're not actually spending >6 months at a specific residence in another state, and are still paying your NY and federal taxes, I don't think there's any problem. Where things get sketchy is if you're trying to claim NY is your primary residence while living in CA for 9 months of the year. I'm not a lawyer though. What I'm more familiar with is overseas residency and federal taxes. There are benefits to establishing legal residency outside the US, if you really do live and work outside the US. But then you have to be able to prove it to the IRS. If you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. But if you spend more than 33 days per year in the US, the burden of proof for establishing a bona fide foreign residency are higher[1]. Edit: update since I can't nest any more replies (to @dragonwriter) below: I sorta changed topics; my paragraph above about foreign residency is only relevant if you're earning foreign income. If you're a US citizen working for a US company, you're not getting away from taxes that way. But you can still save yourself from some personal obligation by setting up a company. [1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion-bona-fide-residence-test https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. That’s...not true. State income tax is usually due on dollars earned in the state — it used to be usually the union of (dollars earned by residents) and (dollars earned by work in the state) but a 2015 federal court decision required it to be one or the other, and AFAIK every state with an income tax has chosen the latter over the former because, basically, resident citizens vote in the state while citizens resident in other states, the most common nonresident citizen workers, don’t. So, a bona fide overseas residence doesn't have any effect on state income tax liability.
- 5y ago