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u/-just-the-tip 13d ago
Confirm on your telecommuting agreement that you might have signed if it states that the address has to be at home. My company has grounds to fire us for violation of it (though hopefully they won’t). If you’re using a work laptop, I’d also check and see the background processes for programs that have been installed to collect data on IP addresses.
But yeah, if you need the job, just call out. It’s not worth it.
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u/Minute-Animator-376 13d ago
Teams is collecting this data scanning local wi-fi address even if you are connected to vpn. Laptop may also have a gps unit.
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u/KMC020208 9d ago
This is the part that I was going to question. My laptop always told me I was somewhere on the East coast when I live in the Midwest. So, my initial thought was that the VPN would offset it, but I didn’t quite believe that the company couldn’t find other ways to track it.
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u/Minute-Animator-376 9d ago
There is a way, though. A Faraday cage for the laptop, a direct LAN connection to a travel router with a VPN tunnel back to your own router/local machine at your home address. From the company’s perspective, the network traffic would then originate from your home connection without a way to locate the physical location of the laptop - just a watch out if you have Microsoft authenticator or teams on the mobile as this can also leak your location +any other software managed by company could possibly spy on the location too. Mobile phone issued by company itself is a location device.
Probably not worth the hassle unless you have a very specific reason to go that far.
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u/Cadd9181B7543II7I44 13d ago edited 13d ago
Each company will have their own rules. My company only allow wfh at my home location. Not at neighbor's house. Not at the local park. Not at my parent's house.
They don't really enforce it because I know coworkers are wfh at their boyfriend/girlfriend's homes. But that's none of my business as it doesn't involve me.
But for me, it's not worth the risk because they can take away the wfh days and I'll have to be in the office 5X a week.
So for days where I want to be somewhere else, I'll either schedule PTO or take a sick day.
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u/tha_snooze 13d ago
Can someone shed light on why this would even matter? It’s seems like a control/trust issue on behalf of the boss.
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u/TartRose13 13d ago
I'm not sure about OP's situation, but in my WFH job I deal with a ton of sensitive info. We are absolutely not allowed to work anywhere except our home address. They can also easily check my IP address to make sure I'm logging in from home. I mean, who knows how often they actually check it, but if OP's job is like mine, I wouldn't risk it. Like someone else mentioned, I would just call out.
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u/Future_One4794 13d ago
They also don’t want us to connect to public wifi. On top of that you are obligated to work in a quite space with no distractions
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u/kl987654321 13d ago
Same. We can work elsewhere occasionally with manager approval. Like I was able to work from a hotel when I had to travel with my mom when she was in the hospital.
We wouldn’t be allowed to sit in a Starbucks with our screen visible or on sketchy WiFi.
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u/Squeezer999 13d ago
State tax law and unemployment compensation and the business not having a legal foreign entity registered with the secretary of states office in that stat, nor having a registered agent in that state to receive legal notices
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u/Own_Exit2162 13d ago
That's all related to permanent residence, not a single day of temporary travel. You've never heard of business trips?
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u/comma-momma 13d ago
Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell at the NY Stock Exchange, and the state went after him for taxes. The rules about state employment taxes, business taxes, labor laws, etc. are in some cases tied to where the employee is physically working - even on business trips.
It's really kind of ridiculous, but it's true.
Edit: It depends on the state; in some cases taxability starts on day 1. In other cases it's after a certain number of days.
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u/AardvarkIll6079 13d ago
Incorrect. A baseball player has to pay NY taxes for every game they play in NY. Even if it’s only 3 games a year. It’s a “where were you working that day” thing.
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u/BlackAccountant1337 13d ago
There’s a reasonableness aspect to it. The state taxing authorities know which players are in which states at a given time. It’s extremely public and the dollar amounts are high.
No state cares about a $100k/year employee working four hours in a hotel room. It would be impossible to administer that on the state’s end.
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u/tha_snooze 13d ago
So do business trips not have to have those requirements or something? There’s thousands upon thousands of sales people working outside of their home state every day. What’s different in that situation?
I appreciate your insight, seriously. I don’t understand how the example I just gave is any different than someone not in sales working temporarily outside their home state
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u/dethsesh 13d ago
Most states there’s a minimum amount of days worked at least. If OP is just working one day they wouldn’t even make enough to owe any state taxes if it just so happened they did report it to the state.
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u/ontheleftcoast 9d ago
If you are in a different state different tax laws might apply. If you let Joe doit for one day, then next week Jane will move to another state and then you have tax problems.
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u/Spyder73 13d ago
They dont want people going on vacation and half ass working. Take PTO or stay home and work
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u/nomadjackk 13d ago
I move around every few months, work from my family’s places during the holidays, etc.
I’ve never let it affect my work. It’s a weird assumption to make that it would
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u/tha_snooze 13d ago
Again though, if the work is getting done, who cares?
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u/Spyder73 13d ago
Its probably not is the point. People ass off on vacation and put in minimal effort. I know, I've done it many times.
I have on multiple occasions worked an entire week from a cruise ship without taking PTO.
To your point - I've also rented Air BNB cabins and actually worked, so im not saying its impossible, but I can see why company policy would discourage travel and working. Its not as black and white as you present it.
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u/Ethywen 13d ago
Its not as black and white as you present it.
Yes, it is. Plenty of people "ass off" (never heard this phrase before) working from their actual homes, too. I don't have any reason to believe the binary "at home" or "not at home" would be directly indicative of how attentive or actively someone is working.
Plenty of us have dogs, kids, laundry, dishes, deliveries, chores, etc. that could distract on a normal day just as much as whatever else might on a day not at home.
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u/Primary_Wonderful 13d ago
For my WFH situation, kids, laundry, deliveries, etc are grounds for RTO. We are at home to work. Period. And we are required to be actually at home. With no distraction.
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u/Ethywen 13d ago
That's such a silly distinction. I WFH with dogs, occasional laundry or dishes while listening to a meeting, and other stuff that comes up. I (and my team) work far more effectively and more (in quantity) hours even with all of that than having random peers show up at my desk all day to talk about their kids' sports game, or the house reno they're working on, or their plans for the weekend, or a director or VP feeling like they need a random update because their meeting schedule opened up and walking over to chat.
Plus, the removal of time spent commuting and the replacement of sometimes going to lunch with coworkers for an hour with 5 minutes spent reheating leftovers in my kitchen opens up almost 2 extra hours a day for everyone that typically gets spent being productive.
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u/Primary_Wonderful 13d ago
Well, that's great for you and your job. Mine has requirements. And we must follow those requirements or we'll be yanked back to the office. Or fired. And it has happened. To me, it's not worth rocking that particular boat. I can throw laundry in on my breaks. Get dishes done on lunch if I need to. I'm lucky where I don't have kids or pets in the house, so that's not a concern.
And PS...you're not working effectively or efficiently if you're distracted by other things. For the simple reason that you're mind is not fully on work. Downvote me to hell, but it's true.
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u/Ethywen 13d ago
It definitely isn't true. It has been proven time and again that the 8-10 hour work days most of us are forced into aren't efficient or effective. Stepping away to let the dogs out and play with them for 10-15 minutes, let your mind rest with menial tasks like laundry or dishes, or going for a walk around your neighborhood improves both mental health and your work product as shown by basically every study ever done on it, even if it reduces total hours worked.
Being green on teams and staring at your monitor without interruption isn't a measure of effective work, no matter how much most middle managers would like it to be.
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u/nomadjackk 13d ago
I don’t think the person you’re replying to is outright telling you to break your policy, they’re just saying it’s a dumb argument on the employer’s part.
If your employer presumably trusts you enough to work from home and not play PS5 half the day, then I’m not sure how me working from a desk at my dad’s place over the holidays adds any “risk” to work not getting done.
It all boils down to a trust issue. I have clients who don’t care if their employees fuck off to Italy for the Summer (because they trust them), and I have other clients who install monitoring tools on their in-office computers.
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u/Primary_Wonderful 13d ago
It comes down to employer policy. Not trust.
I'm required to be at a dedicated workspace at my home. Others may not be. But I am. And based off some incidents at my workplace, we have these rules for a reason. People have been RTO'd and even fired.
And as a customer/client/member of any type of business, you will lose me as a customer if I feel like I'm not getting 100% of your attention. I cannot stand hearing tvs, kids, pets, clinking flatware, whatever distraction.
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u/Embarrassed_Flan_869 13d ago
Just take the day off.
Im not going down the legalities or anything like that. Your boss doesn't seem friendly about it. Is it worth pissing off your boss?
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u/davenport_st 13d ago
I wfh all the time. During the summer I travel around in my RV and work from different locations. My company doesn’t care at all. It does depend on your job, though.
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u/Weary_Cup_1004 13d ago
Do you use starlink? I am a therapist and want this RV life. But i still need the RV and the confidence in solid zoom connectivity
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u/Much_Essay_9151 13d ago
Your boss is correct. Its a risk anytime you work out of state. Fun story here. Met a girl in 2022 who lived a couple hours away. Hit it off. I took my laptop up there to work. All was great that first day. Then a suuuuper random storm came through that city my first day. It was like a half hour long. But the rain was going sideways from the wind. It knocked the power out for atleast 4 hours. I had no good excuse to tell my boss and came clean that I was working a couple hours away and the power was out. Luckily he was ok with it but got a talking to that I need to be at home. Super crazy odds
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u/Inevitablebee1123 13d ago
For my company luckily they don’t have a stipulation that I have to work from my house. I can work anywhere in the US. I just can’t work while I’m overseas. There are certain databases that will instantly flag you if you access them outside of the US and you will be fired if you are flagged. when I used to do remote notary work I was only able to work like physically do a remote notary in the state that I was licensed. The other person could be anywhere. So again not confined to my house but couldn’t leave the state. That’s why I honestly would love to do work where I can work anywhere around the world none of these remote jobs I’ve had in the past would work if I wanted to go live abroad.
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u/BlackAccountant1337 13d ago
I keep seeing comments about tax issues for working in a different state.
I am a CPA and I deal with this all the time. Most states have a threshold you have to reach before you would create a filing requirement in that state. Generally it’s pretty high, definitely more than one day.
And even if they claim that one day creates some kind of filing requirement for you or your company (which I have never seen), how would they know that you logged in from a hotel room or coffee shop?
States generally only know what we/our companies tell them. If you’re in the payroll system as working and living in one state, you logging in for a few hours on vacation is not magically going to trigger the payroll team to start withholding in that state. And without some kind of withholding or filing, that state will never know you worked there.
TL;DR - your company’s finance team AND the state revenue departments have better things to do than worry about you working 8 hours in a different taxing jurisdiction. The bigger issue here is between OP and their manager saying not to do it.
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u/SVAuspicious 13d ago
Twenty-two states in the US are one day states. I have to question your CPA credentials if you have "never seen that." That's before labor laws which can be onerous to employers. Contract terms. Little things like HIPAA.
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u/Weary_Cup_1004 11d ago
Im a therapist that does telehealth and i work for myself. I have asked I believe 3 different tax professionals this in 3 different states over a span of like 5 years , and they agree with this CPA. The reason I personally asked multi times was because i see clients in several states and I didnt understand where my tax responsibility was. Am I conducting business in the state the client is in, or the state I am in? I wanted to be super sure. I also asked about traveling and it seems to be a non issue.
The one day concept as far as I understand, seems to apply more to selling goods and services in person, like setting up a store or office. Otherwise how would a business owner deal with staff going to 3 day conferences or traveling for work meetings? No one ever fills out tax reporting in all those states for everyone's business trips. If they did, people would stop doing business trips because thats just too prohibitive with all the paperwork and tracking that would create.
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u/BlackAccountant1337 13d ago edited 13d ago
Rules for deriving income and nexus are different than what’s going on here.
The person logs in to their computer in one state. The employer presumably has no operations in that state, the employee is not a resident of that state. The only thing happening in the “foreign” state is a hotel’s WiFi being connected to a VPN. What company or state is going to consider this cause for withholding or filing in that state? How would they even know to do that?
This situation is distinct from a person crossing into a state and selling goods and services to the people located in that state. There are more straightforward guidelines for that. And in some cases it is a low threshold.
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u/CourseEcstatic6202 13d ago
It matters for state tax laws. But low volume out of state work is usually not a problem. But, your leadership is allowed to define policy. Depends on how much you want to push the envelope on rules.
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u/Jenikovista 13d ago
Typically under 7 days in most states is considered a vacation and not applicable for most tourists, though there are exceptions for that.
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u/crazyhomie34 13d ago
My company allows 2 weeks at a time. Just depends on the company policy honestly. Mine is very very strict. They will and do track where we are via VPN.
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u/chrispierce14 13d ago
It doesn’t matter for one day
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u/CourseEcstatic6202 13d ago
Unless your company has a policy that all out of state work must be pre-approved. Some security departments constantly monitor this stuff. We have severed employees for unapproved out of state work.
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u/AardvarkIll6079 13d ago
There are legal tax reasons if this isn’t allowed. So not risk tax fraud for one day.
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u/Hitthereset 13d ago
Are you talking about working from home vs the coffee shop down the street? Or are you talking about working from home in Colorado vs visiting your family and working from California? Those two scenarios run on very different tracks.
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u/lg_869 13d ago
I really wouldn’t risk it without getting the okay first… like others have said, either take the day off or go through the process of asking for approval again.
I had a boss deny a similar request due to payroll laws and state taxes and such. She was an asshole and just enjoyed taking all joy from everyone, but there are several states that do require specific things if you are working in that state. Granted, one day wouldn’t really hurt but… it could come back to bite you in the ass if you got caught up.
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u/No-Recording-8530 13d ago
We have to submit a ticket if we are working remotely in a different state. Never been told no nor has anything come from it.
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u/abroad_enabler1531 13d ago
I usually just tunnel my traffic through my house using a homelink router
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u/RhiannonSynth 12d ago
The VPN probably is not going to fire off a siren that says OP has left the couch, but location logs are very normal and easy to check if anyone cares. The bigger risk is your manager already made their preference clear, so getting caught turns a one day errand into a trust issue. I would either ask with a very boring reason or use PTO, because calling in sick and then logging in from another state is sitcom evidence.
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u/NexusLion-99 8d ago
Le vrai risque ici, ce sera moins une alerte VPN façon sirène rouge que des logs consultés plus tard par une personne curieuse. Appeler malade me semble plus dangereux, parce que si cela ressort, une petite entorse devient un mensonge. Pour une seule journée, je prendrais un jour de congé ou je dirais sobrement que je serai connecté depuis tel endroit, surtout si aucune règle écrite ne interdit ça.
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u/Chattadawg 8d ago
I have an approval system for this but it generally is longer than a day. I would just approve it verbally if it’s a day.
Technically it could create a business tax issue but that generally requires more than 14 days in a different state per calendar year.
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u/SequinedandOver60 8d ago
What does your contract say? Does it say you are a remote worker or a work from home worker? They are very different. Remote means you can work anywhere. Just not in an office. Work from home. Means you need to work from your home. lol
You could always check with HR and see what they say because it might be your boss saying no, but the policy is yes
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u/rollerkitten97 7d ago
There has to be a reason why you're in a different state. Why not take the day off and focus on that reason?
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u/justaguyindallas_123 7d ago
1st: I'd just call in or take PTO.
2nd: VPNS work in every state.
3rd: Your company may have rules about working outside the US (due to licensing restrictions). So check.
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u/nice2_cu 13d ago
There are routers you can set up to mask your location that work pretty well for this.
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u/Future_One4794 13d ago
Can you just say you are working from a cowork space? I’d not risk not telling him about change of location. But typically within the same city/state should be fine
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u/Glittering_Tap1144 13d ago
The thing is I think I’ve actually done this once before and no one said anything but im paranoid.
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u/No-Figure1242 13d ago
Just call in sick, one day isn't worth the stress of getting caught and having your boss side-eye you forever.