22 ms·

This should probably be expanded to something more like, "don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know." Because i

This should probably be expanded to something more like, "don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know." Because it's not just California that can surprise you with things like this. Colorado could zing you if you hire someone who works there but didn't list the compensation range on the job listing. Quebec can zing you if you hire a Quebec resident and aren't prepared to allow them to work in French, even if they don't speak French themself.

jrs235 4y ago
This became a concern last year when companies were allowing Work From Home (WFH) but people were taking it as Work Remote. WFH means working from HOME not from a coffee shop, library, etc. And it certainly means not while in another state/country. It complicates taxes. I can see companies that allow WFH or Remote Work clarifying and forcing employees to sign an agreement regarding these clarifications and the employee must indemnify the company and pay for any additional tax compliance expenses and/or government fines [to the company] should they violate them.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  I can see companies that allow WFH or Remote Work clarifying My employer did just this. Nothing crazy restrictive (or at least nothing unexpectedly so, given the nature of local taxation etc). IIRC, it's basically "if you're going to work somewhere for more than 2 weeks, you need approval from your management chain (who has to submit requests to HR/payroll)." There was additional language about international travel. We have many Indian (and other immigrant) teammates living in the US who travel home for extended periods. I did just shy of 2 weeks in Florida earlier this month, all that required was a heads-up to my direct manager, no approval required.
  - Teknoman117 4y ago
    My employer did the same thing. They told all of us that they understood if we moved around because of the changing situation, but not to work from outside the state without approval.
  - georgeburdell 4y ago
    2 weeks sounds a bit restrictive. I was under the impression that 6 months was the guideline to establish residency. I know several people who worked in the East Coast/Hawaii for multiple months, including myself, without letting their management chain know. We did eventually get e-mails warning us about tax implications, based on VPN usage, but no follow-up.
    - leeter 4y ago
      It's not, it's generally the line for a specific state to care. We've had consultants at my current employer who have to figure out exactly how many days they've spent in Arkansas because Arkansas wants income taxes for the days they worked in state. Technically even one day working in Arkansas triggers this... to the point we've had people refuse to work on that client because it seriously complicated their taxes.
      - astura 4y ago
        This is called a "jock tax" because it's mostly aimed at collecting revenue from visiting athletes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax >In the United States, the jock tax is the colloquially named income tax levied against visitors to a city or state who earn money in that jurisdiction.
  - legalcorrection 4y ago
    Florida is easy. No income tax and lax employment laws.
monkeybutton 4y ago
I do wonder how OQLF will deal with WFH now. They once inspected my former employer's office and we had to silly things like ensure every computer had a French keyboard, even if the employee was English speaking. Just in case a French employee were to use it one day? Now, working remotely, what will they do? Come to my house? Inspect my basement? Hah!
- bilange 4y ago
  > Come to my house? Inspect my basement? I would love the OQLF to try. On my main PC, I use an Ergodox clone, basically a kind of split keyboard. Keycaps for said keyboard are tricky to find in sets that fits for every key (unless I buy them per piece I suppose), and that's for a basic English-US keyboard. Anything else is virtually unheard of- let me know if I am wrong. Anyway, using English keycaps is a big no-no from the OQLF and would require me to switch, but to what?! Here's the kicker: I am typing that with the Bépo keyboard layout, basically a French Dvorak. This would require me to make a special request to a keycap maker, as anything non-alphabetic is really different. So installing a blank keycap set with unmarked keys would be the cheapest way to go about this problem, but I don't think this would pass the OQLF requirements neither. OQLF suggests but in no way requires the Canadian Multilingual keyboard. Typing in French, with associated keys properly marked, is what matters to them.
  - jleyank 4y ago
    The language police could care less how non French workers operate, merely that it’s fully possible for Francophones to operate fully in French. Maybe this is limited to 26+ or 50+ sized companies but I escaped years back. They’re quite aggressive about this and don’t care about the impact. Walmart, for example, needed to add magasin and KFC was PFK etc.
    - mumblemumble 4y ago
      Wait... Walmart is too English? It's been a while and I barely remember life from before the pandemic anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was still Canadian Tire and Target, not Pneus Canadiens and Cible.
x0x0 4y ago
This is just someone who started a business and didn't do 10 minutes of basic research. It's not a secret that if you do business in a state (eg by hiring an employee), you will be required to register in that state and pay taxes. Every state does this.
- stickfigure 4y ago
  There are thousands of "10 minutes of basic research" items. You can point at any given one of them and show how easy it is to understand, but the sheer number of them makes the endeavor daunting. To navigate properly you need to hire lawyers, accountants, human resources. Possibly multiple times, to get local expertise in each state. All for a business that produces negative income to start.
  - x0x0 4y ago
    No, you really don't (human resources? Please). Nor are there thousands. I, like many other people -- and I'm not a genius, nor an attorney -- have managed to run a small business in accordance with these rules. Was there sometimes a consult with an inexpensive lawyer around hiring, or an accountant around taxes and payroll? Sure, but that was it.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    Hiring those professionals, or having them available for consultation, is a core requirement for starting a real business. If you didn't budget for that, that's a poor reflection of you as a founder.
    - WkndTriathlete 4y ago
      Just because it currently is that way doesn't mean it should be that way. This tax situation explicitly penalizes and actively discourages two guys starting up a single business in their respective garages across state lines. Imagine if Jobs and Woz were starting today and lived in CA and OR. That version of Apple would have never gotten off the ground due to idiotic laws like this.
causi 4y ago
This should probably be expanded to something more like, "don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know." The fact states can reach outside their own jurisdiction is pretty insane in my opinion. If I'm sending money to someone who lives in State A, compliance with the regulations of State A should be the responsibility of the person who lives there, not the person who doesn't. This regulatory burden means I would never employ anyone except as a 1099 until my business was large enough hire a full time payroll accountant. I owe $800 for the “minimum franchise tax”. California charges this fee to everyone for the “privilege” of “doing business” in California, whether they have revenue or not. How is this not extraordinarily counterproductive? Residents of California have a child, then spend tremendous resources both private and public raising and educating that child. When the child becomes an adult he find an employment opportunity with a company in another state. California behaves as if it would rather him just leave and take all those resources than stay and pay income tax on his earnings that come from out of state.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  We are also living in a time of unprecedented amounts and ease of access to true remote work - are we really surprised the laws are behind the times?
  - mgbmtl 4y ago
    Hiring freelancers, on the other hand, is usually pretty simple, since none of those laws apply. The main risk, say, as a Canadian, is if I visit a US-based client, then I can't be officially "working while in the US", but it's OK if I do it remotely. I freelance for my local Canadian company, and if my company sends me to the US, then it's fine, because the client pays my company, who then pays me. The US company is not paying me directly.
    - jleyank 4y ago
      Without a valid work visa, they might not even let you (Canadian going to us) into the country. We’ve had salesman turned back when doing training cuz the border guards thought a fee was involved. Sales support was ok.
bilange 4y ago
> Quebec can zing you if you hire a Quebec resident and aren't prepared to allow them to work in French, even if they don't speak French themself. For the uninitiated, this means having all UI elements in French, (OS, software, ...) as well as all things physical like keyboards signs, everything. Even if for example I am perfectly capable (and actually prefer, to lookup errors messages online for example) of working in English, the OQLF still requires Quebec employees to be exposed to French language first and foremost, regardless of users preferences. Source: IT Guy being on the receiving end of said directives.
- Dangeranger 4y ago
  How are these regulations handled in a practical sense? Are employees shipped equipment and served internationalized documentation that defaults to French, and then allowed to choose their preference afterwards for all services and applications?
  - bilange 4y ago
    The companies I worked for are headquartered in Quebec (with the exception of my current job), so I can only confidently comment for the "internal to Quebec" situations. I recently joined a company that was acquired by a bigger US company, and now all company wide communications are bilingual since then. ERP was already bilingual since the 90s as my direct employer is basically Canadian-wide. I know the basis of these regulations is to give Quebec employees not fluent enough in English the power to ask/require a fully French environment. I BELIEVE this can escalate up to the OQLF being able to fine companies not being able to provide a French environment to their employees, but don't quote me on that. As far as english language software is concerned, most Quebec employees have a varying degree of "letting go" on this matter when confronted to English messages, as long as their internal documentation/knowledge let them know what messages are considered normal in their work process, even if they don't understand fully what that means. The OQLF, however, believe this is a major problem to be dealt with yesterday: IT HAS to make available said software in their French version, if the software publisher actually publish a French version. If not, I believe you are encouraged (forced? not fully sure) to ask the software developer about availability. Even if the software developper released a broken (or even partial!) French version using Google Translator, it becomes THE version to deploy, no buts.
mbesto 4y ago
NC and NYS taxed me for my biz partners living there, but I live in TX with no income tax.
ccleve 4y ago
>don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know. If you read the blog post, you can see that I fully knew and complied with the employment laws. (I used Gusto, as it happens). The blog post has nothing to do with employment laws. The blog post is about income taxes, the franchise fee, Sec of State filings and absurd amounts of paperwork.
- jeremysalwen 4y ago
  Unfortunately it doesn't matter what you want to call the law. If there is a law that requires you to do something when employing California residents, that is de facto an employment law, and the point still stands.
- Dangeranger 4y ago
  The crux of your argument was that a state should not have their laws imposed on you due to the state’s definition of a “business nexus”. I didn’t read the comment above as accusing you of not following the laws, but of being caught off-guard by your business falling under the jurisdiction of the state, and disagreeing with that. You said in the blog post that you were surprised by this, and that implies that you “did not know the employment laws” prior to hiring a person residing within that state. In other words, you assumed that only laws within the state where your business was registered would apply, which was incorrect.
unethical_ban 4y ago
True. Absolutely. But you miss the point, I think. The point is "the employment laws described are horrendous and a suppressive force on out-of-state employers hiring someone in CA".
outside1234 4y ago
Yes - and being realistic - you should probably just focus on one locale to start. It is just too much for a startup to manage multiple locations because of these issues.
tannhauser23 4y ago
This really isn't the zinger you think it is. It should not be so burdensome to hire one employee, c'mon.
hnburnsy 4y ago
In the US it is probably better to keep an employee 1099 and fight the IRS on 'contractor vs employee' than fight the CA FTB on business nexus.
BrandoElFollito 4y ago
How can Canada interfere with labor laws in the US? If, as a French, I hire a German citizen on a French contact, they will be under French law only. If I hire them under a German contact then obviously Germans law apply.

jrs235 4y ago

This became a concern last year when companies were allowing Work From Home (WFH) but people were taking it as Work Remote. WFH means working from HOME not from a coffee shop, library, etc. And it certainly means not while in another state/country. It complicates taxes. I can see companies that allow WFH or Remote Work clarifying and forcing employees to sign an agreement regarding these clarifications and the employee must indemnify the company and pay for any additional tax compliance expenses and/or government fines [to the company] should they violate them.

alistairSH 4y ago
I can see companies that allow WFH or Remote Work clarifying My employer did just this. Nothing crazy restrictive (or at least nothing unexpectedly so, given the nature of local taxation etc). IIRC, it's basically "if you're going to work somewhere for more than 2 weeks, you need approval from your management chain (who has to submit requests to HR/payroll)." There was additional language about international travel. We have many Indian (and other immigrant) teammates living in the US who travel home for extended periods. I did just shy of 2 weeks in Florida earlier this month, all that required was a heads-up to my direct manager, no approval required.
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  My employer did the same thing. They told all of us that they understood if we moved around because of the changing situation, but not to work from outside the state without approval.
- georgeburdell 4y ago
  2 weeks sounds a bit restrictive. I was under the impression that 6 months was the guideline to establish residency. I know several people who worked in the East Coast/Hawaii for multiple months, including myself, without letting their management chain know. We did eventually get e-mails warning us about tax implications, based on VPN usage, but no follow-up.
  - leeter 4y ago
    It's not, it's generally the line for a specific state to care. We've had consultants at my current employer who have to figure out exactly how many days they've spent in Arkansas because Arkansas wants income taxes for the days they worked in state. Technically even one day working in Arkansas triggers this... to the point we've had people refuse to work on that client because it seriously complicated their taxes.
    - astura 4y ago
      This is called a "jock tax" because it's mostly aimed at collecting revenue from visiting athletes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax >In the United States, the jock tax is the colloquially named income tax levied against visitors to a city or state who earn money in that jurisdiction.
- legalcorrection 4y ago
  Florida is easy. No income tax and lax employment laws.

monkeybutton 4y ago

I do wonder how OQLF will deal with WFH now. They once inspected my former employer's office and we had to silly things like ensure every computer had a French keyboard, even if the employee was English speaking. Just in case a French employee were to use it one day? Now, working remotely, what will they do? Come to my house? Inspect my basement? Hah!

bilange 4y ago
> Come to my house? Inspect my basement? I would love the OQLF to try. On my main PC, I use an Ergodox clone, basically a kind of split keyboard. Keycaps for said keyboard are tricky to find in sets that fits for every key (unless I buy them per piece I suppose), and that's for a basic English-US keyboard. Anything else is virtually unheard of- let me know if I am wrong. Anyway, using English keycaps is a big no-no from the OQLF and would require me to switch, but to what?! Here's the kicker: I am typing that with the Bépo keyboard layout, basically a French Dvorak. This would require me to make a special request to a keycap maker, as anything non-alphabetic is really different. So installing a blank keycap set with unmarked keys would be the cheapest way to go about this problem, but I don't think this would pass the OQLF requirements neither. OQLF suggests but in no way requires the Canadian Multilingual keyboard. Typing in French, with associated keys properly marked, is what matters to them.
- jleyank 4y ago
  The language police could care less how non French workers operate, merely that it’s fully possible for Francophones to operate fully in French. Maybe this is limited to 26+ or 50+ sized companies but I escaped years back. They’re quite aggressive about this and don’t care about the impact. Walmart, for example, needed to add magasin and KFC was PFK etc.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    Wait... Walmart is too English? It's been a while and I barely remember life from before the pandemic anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was still Canadian Tire and Target, not Pneus Canadiens and Cible.

x0x0 4y ago

This is just someone who started a business and didn't do 10 minutes of basic research. It's not a secret that if you do business in a state (eg by hiring an employee), you will be required to register in that state and pay taxes. Every state does this.

stickfigure 4y ago
There are thousands of "10 minutes of basic research" items. You can point at any given one of them and show how easy it is to understand, but the sheer number of them makes the endeavor daunting. To navigate properly you need to hire lawyers, accountants, human resources. Possibly multiple times, to get local expertise in each state. All for a business that produces negative income to start.
- x0x0 4y ago
  No, you really don't (human resources? Please). Nor are there thousands. I, like many other people -- and I'm not a genius, nor an attorney -- have managed to run a small business in accordance with these rules. Was there sometimes a consult with an inexpensive lawyer around hiring, or an accountant around taxes and payroll? Sure, but that was it.
- brewdad 4y ago
  Hiring those professionals, or having them available for consultation, is a core requirement for starting a real business. If you didn't budget for that, that's a poor reflection of you as a founder.
  - WkndTriathlete 4y ago
    Just because it currently is that way doesn't mean it should be that way. This tax situation explicitly penalizes and actively discourages two guys starting up a single business in their respective garages across state lines. Imagine if Jobs and Woz were starting today and lived in CA and OR. That version of Apple would have never gotten off the ground due to idiotic laws like this.

causi 4y ago

This should probably be expanded to something more like, "don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know." The fact states can reach outside their own jurisdiction is pretty insane in my opinion. If I'm sending money to someone who lives in State A, compliance with the regulations of State A should be the responsibility of the person who lives there, not the person who doesn't. This regulatory burden means I would never employ anyone except as a 1099 until my business was large enough hire a full time payroll accountant. I owe $800 for the “minimum franchise tax”. California charges this fee to everyone for the “privilege” of “doing business” in California, whether they have revenue or not. How is this not extraordinarily counterproductive? Residents of California have a child, then spend tremendous resources both private and public raising and educating that child. When the child becomes an adult he find an employment opportunity with a company in another state. California behaves as if it would rather him just leave and take all those resources than stay and pay income tax on his earnings that come from out of state.

Melatonic 4y ago
We are also living in a time of unprecedented amounts and ease of access to true remote work - are we really surprised the laws are behind the times?
- mgbmtl 4y ago
  Hiring freelancers, on the other hand, is usually pretty simple, since none of those laws apply. The main risk, say, as a Canadian, is if I visit a US-based client, then I can't be officially "working while in the US", but it's OK if I do it remotely. I freelance for my local Canadian company, and if my company sends me to the US, then it's fine, because the client pays my company, who then pays me. The US company is not paying me directly.
  - jleyank 4y ago
    Without a valid work visa, they might not even let you (Canadian going to us) into the country. We’ve had salesman turned back when doing training cuz the border guards thought a fee was involved. Sales support was ok.

bilange 4y ago

> Quebec can zing you if you hire a Quebec resident and aren't prepared to allow them to work in French, even if they don't speak French themself. For the uninitiated, this means having all UI elements in French, (OS, software, ...) as well as all things physical like keyboards signs, everything. Even if for example I am perfectly capable (and actually prefer, to lookup errors messages online for example) of working in English, the OQLF still requires Quebec employees to be exposed to French language first and foremost, regardless of users preferences. Source: IT Guy being on the receiving end of said directives.

Dangeranger 4y ago
How are these regulations handled in a practical sense? Are employees shipped equipment and served internationalized documentation that defaults to French, and then allowed to choose their preference afterwards for all services and applications?
- bilange 4y ago
  The companies I worked for are headquartered in Quebec (with the exception of my current job), so I can only confidently comment for the "internal to Quebec" situations. I recently joined a company that was acquired by a bigger US company, and now all company wide communications are bilingual since then. ERP was already bilingual since the 90s as my direct employer is basically Canadian-wide. I know the basis of these regulations is to give Quebec employees not fluent enough in English the power to ask/require a fully French environment. I BELIEVE this can escalate up to the OQLF being able to fine companies not being able to provide a French environment to their employees, but don't quote me on that. As far as english language software is concerned, most Quebec employees have a varying degree of "letting go" on this matter when confronted to English messages, as long as their internal documentation/knowledge let them know what messages are considered normal in their work process, even if they don't understand fully what that means. The OQLF, however, believe this is a major problem to be dealt with yesterday: IT HAS to make available said software in their French version, if the software publisher actually publish a French version. If not, I believe you are encouraged (forced? not fully sure) to ask the software developer about availability. Even if the software developper released a broken (or even partial!) French version using Google Translator, it becomes THE version to deploy, no buts.

mbesto 4y ago

NC and NYS taxed me for my biz partners living there, but I live in TX with no income tax.

ccleve 4y ago

>don't hire remote employees living in a jurisdiction whose employment laws you don't know. If you read the blog post, you can see that I fully knew and complied with the employment laws. (I used Gusto, as it happens). The blog post has nothing to do with employment laws. The blog post is about income taxes, the franchise fee, Sec of State filings and absurd amounts of paperwork.

jeremysalwen 4y ago
Unfortunately it doesn't matter what you want to call the law. If there is a law that requires you to do something when employing California residents, that is de facto an employment law, and the point still stands.
Dangeranger 4y ago
The crux of your argument was that a state should not have their laws imposed on you due to the state’s definition of a “business nexus”. I didn’t read the comment above as accusing you of not following the laws, but of being caught off-guard by your business falling under the jurisdiction of the state, and disagreeing with that. You said in the blog post that you were surprised by this, and that implies that you “did not know the employment laws” prior to hiring a person residing within that state. In other words, you assumed that only laws within the state where your business was registered would apply, which was incorrect.

unethical_ban 4y ago

True. Absolutely. But you miss the point, I think. The point is "the employment laws described are horrendous and a suppressive force on out-of-state employers hiring someone in CA".

outside1234 4y ago

Yes - and being realistic - you should probably just focus on one locale to start. It is just too much for a startup to manage multiple locations because of these issues.

tannhauser23 4y ago

This really isn't the zinger you think it is. It should not be so burdensome to hire one employee, c'mon.

hnburnsy 4y ago

In the US it is probably better to keep an employee 1099 and fight the IRS on 'contractor vs employee' than fight the CA FTB on business nexus.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago

How can Canada interfere with labor laws in the US? If, as a French, I hire a German citizen on a French contact, they will be under French law only. If I hire them under a German contact then obviously Germans law apply.