4 ms·

EDIT: US centric rant. Nobody is talking about the challenges WFH brings for small employers since we are all so fascinated with the positives so far. As a sma

EDIT: US centric rant. Nobody is talking about the challenges WFH brings for small employers since we are all so fascinated with the positives so far. As a small business owner, you want to hire an employee out of state ? Just 1 employee on W2 ? Great. Go setup and register your company in that state and deal with crazy paperwork even for 1 employee. Oh you want to offer them health insurance ? Hmm, your insurance company doesn't operate well in that state. Now what ? Ok you try to come up with separate reimbursement/comp for that employee. Oh, your state offers Sick leave by law but then what do you do for employee not in that state ? Lot of hurdles. Yes, there are services like remote.com etc these days but they don't really help you build your own organic team in house. You cannot 1099 everyone especially if they are only working for you as a full time employee (IRS won't like that). You can get away hiring foreign contractors but until there is real legislation to hire people anywhere easily, this is a pain in the neck especially for smaller companies. Large companies should have no excuse. I am all for remote (have some of our best employees remote) but as a business owner, it is a lot of hurdles legally to go through. Yes Gitlab does it and all but they have cash to spend and circumvent lot of BS regulations with employment and taxes. I want a federal law in the United States that allows you to hire anyone in any state without doing the "Register in my state" bullshit and all that nexus crap. We can then talk a big game.

ghaff 5y ago
I worked for a very small company that had people in different states and even a different country. That said, it's reasonable for a small business to decide that you don't want to hire out of state. Unless you have specific needs and are located somewhere unusual, hiring a few people in-state shouldn't be that big a limitation. In general, the overall trend seems to be people moving away from urban areas but staying in cities--with a few obvious exceptions where a greater metro area spans into neighboring states as in New England.
- codegeek 5y ago
  I run one of those companies and hence speaking from experience. I want to hire employees (not contractors) all over the United States but it is such a pain. I did that in 2 states already (in addition to primary state) and drowning with shitty paperwork.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmeyerov 5y ago
    I agree it is a mess, both domestically and internationally We do this and are hiring remote largely fine in the US: - book keeper shared w multiple startups - who handles most states + outside person for rest - we also use Gusto here, though they did screw up one key state and never took responsibility, so we will be leaving them We will be switching to an intl'l friendly PEO so we can do intl better, if folks have recs Anyways if you have enough $ to hire people, I strongly recommend paying a bit: they can do it way faster and properly, including maintenance, so you gain time and $ vs you doing it slowly and at opportunity cost. Problem still exists, but a small but of $ per new hire makes it go away. I do occasionally worry about rogue states / districts who increase our legal risk, like parts of Texas...
cududa 5y ago
… if you’re a small company then your other option is to offer a large relocation benefit and high salary to get someone to move to the location you’re in. So a return to in person work wouldn’t solve your issue of hiring someone out of state
- codegeek 5y ago
  But then you are asking people to relocate which these days, people don't want to do. I mean young people may if given a good relocation but people with families are not willing to do it that easily.
mym1990 5y ago
Honest question: how big is the trade off of not offering an employee insurance and instead increasing compensation and letting them get their own? Is there a ton of cost savings in companies offering insurance vs going the other route?
- treeman79 5y ago
  Taxes are a big deal for tbis
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Taxes and the availability of Obamacare aside, if you try to hire me into a full-time professional position with no benefits, the conversation is over. Let's save both of us some time.
WhisperingShiba 5y ago
This is less of a problem with WFH and more of a problem with regulation, IMO.
- codegeek 5y ago
  But to an extent, they are linked. I want to open up candidate pool by hiring anywhere in the US but too much bullshit to hire an employee who will work out of state.
tomrod 5y ago
This doesn't make sense. Why does a business need to be registered in a state to have employees there? Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. We've used ADP to handle the taxes, unemployment, and payment paperwork, but several providers in this space. Insurance seems to be flexible enough to handle as well. Zenefits and others work fine to ensure benefits are built appropriately.
- ghaff 5y ago
  My understanding is that you typically need a business license for a state where you have employees and, while various companies can handle a lot of the day to day payroll/benefits, you can't outsource everything and there are typically legal and other costs associated with adding an employee in a different state.
- vincentmarle 5y ago
  > Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. If your company is registered in Delaware but your office is in California, you’re also required to register your company in California. Repeat this for every state you operate in or have employees.
- codegeek 5y ago
  I am not downvoting you but you need to check this. There is something called "nexus" and you can google it. You can get away with it but if you have employees working more than a certain number of days in a state, you need to register your business there even if you don't conduct actual business there. This is what my CPA has told me and google confirms it.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. That's the opposite. Yes, you can register someplace like Delaware and not have any employees there. But you can't have employees living in Delaware and not be registered there.
- 5y ago
nrp 5y ago
I agree this is a huge pain, but the benefits of being able to hire the best people where they already are still outweighs the paperwork overhead. I have found the least painful solution to be using Rippling as an HR/payroll system and Northwest Registered Agent to register an entity in each needed state. Between the two, it takes relatively little time and no physical mailing of forms to get set up in each new state.
jasonjei 5y ago
We’ve hired people in remote states with Gusto (I think they do most of the setup with payroll/unemployment tax), and we have a small business United Healthcare PPO plan that seems to work everywhere, even though we setup the plan and LLC in AZ (and I’m in CA, myself). But I’m there with you. It should be as easy as “1099-ing,” and frankly that is the easiest option for us if they’re willing to accept that arrangement (many won’t, because they don’t want to hire a CPA or track their own write offs).
- codegeek 5y ago
  Gusto is very helpful but it doesn't do everything for you. You still have to setup the company on the state's websites (sometimes very shitty) and then connect with Gusto. We use Gusto as well so I know what you are talking about.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Note that tons of companies do it but deciding to just "1099" an employee is not really legal. Whether or not an employee is a W2 employee or a 1099 contractor is solely supposed to be a function of the work that employee does and how they do it. Importantly, neither the employer nor the employee just gets to "decide" how they want to be classified, and you're not supposed to have 1099 employees in essentially the same roles as W2 employees. Like I said, tons of businesses still do this, and there are ways to structure the job so that someone can be correctly designated a 1099 contractor (e.g. they have more flexibility over their hours and equipment). Still just wanted to call this out because lots of people seem to be under the misperception that you get to just arbitrarily choose your employment classification.
chrsig 5y ago
WFH doesn't mean you need to hire in geographically disparate areas edit: spelling
drewda 5y ago
> You cannot 1099 everyone especially if they are only working for you as a full time employee (IRS won't like that) One way smaller companies do accomplish this is with "professional employer organizations." A PEO is the legal employer of the full-time staff, provides their insurance, processes their W-2s, etc. An executive at the company is the actual day-to-day manager of the staff, and the company pays the PEO to cover all the staffing expenses. Not as relevant when you also want to pay staff with equity, but it's a fine option for paying staff with cash and benefits in multiple states or countries.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I worked for a fully remote startup who used Trinet (PEO) and was issued equity, didn’t seem to be an issue. There are challenges if you want to hire and issue equity across international borders, I believe you have to incorporate a related entity in the country you’re issuing equity in to support such compensation issuance.
  - 1-more 5y ago
    We use Trinet and while I think there are weird challenges to the whole thing, I know our international employees have stock options just like those of us in the US. They were even able to exercise some of their options when we had a weird event that let us do that. So it's definitely doable! I'm not sure how much of a hassle it is for the executive team to deal with all of that, but I do know that we got to the result.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Appreciate you sharing the datapoint.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonjei 5y ago
  This is very interesting. I might use this. What is a good and reputable one that you’ve heard people using successfully? And also not too costly?
warent 5y ago
Can't all of these problems be solved by only hiring remote workers in-state?
- codegeek 5y ago
  Yes but then you are restricting your candidate pool AND then you will piss people off who are looking for remote anywhere jobs and get flak for not posting a "true WFH job" :)
  - chrsig 5y ago
    ugh, you also have to pay the employees, too! why can't there just be some option where a company doesn't need to make any of these silly tradeoffs!?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Apreche 5y ago
Businesses could solve the insurance problem by lobbying the government to institute universal health care.
stevesearer 5y ago
I am a small business owner with employees in multiple states. We use the Qualified Small Employer Reimbursement program which lets us reimburse our employees for the health insurance premiums and other health-related expenses they pay as we don’t qualify for a traditional group plan.
- codegeek 5y ago
  Yes but you still have to register the business for Unemployment Insurance, payroll taxes etc in the state.
  - stevesearer 5y ago
    Yeah definitely, I was mostly responding to say that there is a somewhat flexible option for health insurance. We use Gusto for payroll but have to spend a not-insignificant amount of time wrestling with each state’s system. Plus there are a growing number of cities or metros that you have to register with as well.
mbesto 5y ago
> You can get away hiring foreign contractors but until there is real legislation to hire people anywhere easily, this is a pain in the neck especially for smaller companies. This is what PEOs and EOR companies are for. > Yes Gitlab does it and all but they have cash to spend and circumvent lot of BS regulations with employment and taxes. They likely use a PEO/EOR for their foreign employees. These are known issues with known solutions, they're just costly. Just some of the players: https://pilot.co/ https://pilot.co/ https://papayaglobal.com/ https://papayaglobal.com/ https://velocityglobal.com/ https://velocityglobal.com/ https://www.trinet.com/ https://www.trinet.com/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
schwartzworld 5y ago
It seems like all your problems with WFH are really problems with having out-of-state employees. Those aren't the same thing. What's stopping you from hiring remote workers who live within the state lines?

ghaff 5y ago

I worked for a very small company that had people in different states and even a different country. That said, it's reasonable for a small business to decide that you don't want to hire out of state. Unless you have specific needs and are located somewhere unusual, hiring a few people in-state shouldn't be that big a limitation. In general, the overall trend seems to be people moving away from urban areas but staying in cities--with a few obvious exceptions where a greater metro area spans into neighboring states as in New England.

codegeek 5y ago
I run one of those companies and hence speaking from experience. I want to hire employees (not contractors) all over the United States but it is such a pain. I did that in 2 states already (in addition to primary state) and drowning with shitty paperwork.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lmeyerov 5y ago
  I agree it is a mess, both domestically and internationally We do this and are hiring remote largely fine in the US: - book keeper shared w multiple startups - who handles most states + outside person for rest - we also use Gusto here, though they did screw up one key state and never took responsibility, so we will be leaving them We will be switching to an intl'l friendly PEO so we can do intl better, if folks have recs Anyways if you have enough $ to hire people, I strongly recommend paying a bit: they can do it way faster and properly, including maintenance, so you gain time and $ vs you doing it slowly and at opportunity cost. Problem still exists, but a small but of $ per new hire makes it go away. I do occasionally worry about rogue states / districts who increase our legal risk, like parts of Texas...

cududa 5y ago

… if you’re a small company then your other option is to offer a large relocation benefit and high salary to get someone to move to the location you’re in. So a return to in person work wouldn’t solve your issue of hiring someone out of state

codegeek 5y ago
But then you are asking people to relocate which these days, people don't want to do. I mean young people may if given a good relocation but people with families are not willing to do it that easily.

mym1990 5y ago

Honest question: how big is the trade off of not offering an employee insurance and instead increasing compensation and letting them get their own? Is there a ton of cost savings in companies offering insurance vs going the other route?

treeman79 5y ago
Taxes are a big deal for tbis
- ghaff 5y ago
  Taxes and the availability of Obamacare aside, if you try to hire me into a full-time professional position with no benefits, the conversation is over. Let's save both of us some time.

WhisperingShiba 5y ago

This is less of a problem with WFH and more of a problem with regulation, IMO.

codegeek 5y ago
But to an extent, they are linked. I want to open up candidate pool by hiring anywhere in the US but too much bullshit to hire an employee who will work out of state.

tomrod 5y ago

This doesn't make sense. Why does a business need to be registered in a state to have employees there? Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. We've used ADP to handle the taxes, unemployment, and payment paperwork, but several providers in this space. Insurance seems to be flexible enough to handle as well. Zenefits and others work fine to ensure benefits are built appropriately.

ghaff 5y ago
My understanding is that you typically need a business license for a state where you have employees and, while various companies can handle a lot of the day to day payroll/benefits, you can't outsource everything and there are typically legal and other costs associated with adding an employee in a different state.
vincentmarle 5y ago
> Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. If your company is registered in Delaware but your office is in California, you’re also required to register your company in California. Repeat this for every state you operate in or have employees.
codegeek 5y ago
I am not downvoting you but you need to check this. There is something called "nexus" and you can google it. You can get away with it but if you have employees working more than a certain number of days in a state, you need to register your business there even if you don't conduct actual business there. This is what my CPA has told me and google confirms it.
cratermoon 5y ago
> Tons of businesses are registered in Delaware without them having any but token employees or owners there. That's the opposite. Yes, you can register someplace like Delaware and not have any employees there. But you can't have employees living in Delaware and not be registered there.
5y ago

nrp 5y ago

I agree this is a huge pain, but the benefits of being able to hire the best people where they already are still outweighs the paperwork overhead. I have found the least painful solution to be using Rippling as an HR/payroll system and Northwest Registered Agent to register an entity in each needed state. Between the two, it takes relatively little time and no physical mailing of forms to get set up in each new state.

jasonjei 5y ago

We’ve hired people in remote states with Gusto (I think they do most of the setup with payroll/unemployment tax), and we have a small business United Healthcare PPO plan that seems to work everywhere, even though we setup the plan and LLC in AZ (and I’m in CA, myself). But I’m there with you. It should be as easy as “1099-ing,” and frankly that is the easiest option for us if they’re willing to accept that arrangement (many won’t, because they don’t want to hire a CPA or track their own write offs).

codegeek 5y ago
Gusto is very helpful but it doesn't do everything for you. You still have to setup the company on the state's websites (sometimes very shitty) and then connect with Gusto. We use Gusto as well so I know what you are talking about.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Note that tons of companies do it but deciding to just "1099" an employee is not really legal. Whether or not an employee is a W2 employee or a 1099 contractor is solely supposed to be a function of the work that employee does and how they do it. Importantly, neither the employer nor the employee just gets to "decide" how they want to be classified, and you're not supposed to have 1099 employees in essentially the same roles as W2 employees. Like I said, tons of businesses still do this, and there are ways to structure the job so that someone can be correctly designated a 1099 contractor (e.g. they have more flexibility over their hours and equipment). Still just wanted to call this out because lots of people seem to be under the misperception that you get to just arbitrarily choose your employment classification.

chrsig 5y ago

WFH doesn't mean you need to hire in geographically disparate areas edit: spelling

drewda 5y ago

> You cannot 1099 everyone especially if they are only working for you as a full time employee (IRS won't like that) One way smaller companies do accomplish this is with "professional employer organizations." A PEO is the legal employer of the full-time staff, provides their insurance, processes their W-2s, etc. An executive at the company is the actual day-to-day manager of the staff, and the company pays the PEO to cover all the staffing expenses. Not as relevant when you also want to pay staff with equity, but it's a fine option for paying staff with cash and benefits in multiple states or countries.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
I worked for a fully remote startup who used Trinet (PEO) and was issued equity, didn’t seem to be an issue. There are challenges if you want to hire and issue equity across international borders, I believe you have to incorporate a related entity in the country you’re issuing equity in to support such compensation issuance.
- 1-more 5y ago
  We use Trinet and while I think there are weird challenges to the whole thing, I know our international employees have stock options just like those of us in the US. They were even able to exercise some of their options when we had a weird event that let us do that. So it's definitely doable! I'm not sure how much of a hassle it is for the executive team to deal with all of that, but I do know that we got to the result.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Appreciate you sharing the datapoint.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jasonjei 5y ago
This is very interesting. I might use this. What is a good and reputable one that you’ve heard people using successfully? And also not too costly?

warent 5y ago

Can't all of these problems be solved by only hiring remote workers in-state?

codegeek 5y ago
Yes but then you are restricting your candidate pool AND then you will piss people off who are looking for remote anywhere jobs and get flak for not posting a "true WFH job" :)
- chrsig 5y ago
  ugh, you also have to pay the employees, too! why can't there just be some option where a company doesn't need to make any of these silly tradeoffs!?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Apreche 5y ago

Businesses could solve the insurance problem by lobbying the government to institute universal health care.

stevesearer 5y ago

I am a small business owner with employees in multiple states. We use the Qualified Small Employer Reimbursement program which lets us reimburse our employees for the health insurance premiums and other health-related expenses they pay as we don’t qualify for a traditional group plan.

codegeek 5y ago
Yes but you still have to register the business for Unemployment Insurance, payroll taxes etc in the state.
- stevesearer 5y ago
  Yeah definitely, I was mostly responding to say that there is a somewhat flexible option for health insurance. We use Gusto for payroll but have to spend a not-insignificant amount of time wrestling with each state’s system. Plus there are a growing number of cities or metros that you have to register with as well.

mbesto 5y ago

> You can get away hiring foreign contractors but until there is real legislation to hire people anywhere easily, this is a pain in the neck especially for smaller companies. This is what PEOs and EOR companies are for. > Yes Gitlab does it and all but they have cash to spend and circumvent lot of BS regulations with employment and taxes. They likely use a PEO/EOR for their foreign employees. These are known issues with known solutions, they're just costly. Just some of the players: https://pilot.co/ https://pilot.co/ https://papayaglobal.com/ https://papayaglobal.com/ https://velocityglobal.com/ https://velocityglobal.com/ https://www.trinet.com/ https://www.trinet.com/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

schwartzworld 5y ago

It seems like all your problems with WFH are really problems with having out-of-state employees. Those aren't the same thing. What's stopping you from hiring remote workers who live within the state lines?