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Comment by vageli | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has worked in the service industry as a server, manager, and eventually part-owner, why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work? This is compounded by the fact that service industry often requires physical presence, which translates to the business having to pay both the sick worker and the worker's temporary replacement.

Doesn't this fall to the government to create some kind of aid? At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.

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The business as an organization has a responsibility to value the humanity of the laborers they employ, which includes understanding that the greater benefit of paying wages is that now everyone has more money to spend on the business (assuming the business is actually good). Similarly, the business should be investing in making sure people are not coming into work sick, especially in the service industry! Spreading sickness to ones customers is a horrific idea. And lastly but not leastly, being able to treat people as humans actually saves the business money in turnover/training costs!

> As someone who has worked in the service industry as a server, manager, and eventually part-owner, why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work?

Because pooling risk results in more robust social systems.

The business owner can take the risk of losing a worker for a week much better than a worker can take the risk of not getting paid.

Because it aligns incentives properly.

If you don't get paid for not working while sick, and you need the money, you'll show up to work, and get other employees and customers sick. If the business has to pick up the tab for sick days, though, they are now incentivised to keep sick workers at home - lest they infect others.

I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.

I think their point was it should be paid from a public fund instead of by the individual business, although I suppose most businesses must have sick pay insurance to pay this, do they not?

You have not addressed why this is not a burden that should be shouldered by government versus business owners.

> I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.

For many small business owners, it can be the difference between paying yourself that week or not.

Although there are a number of socially related reasons - there are likely some significant immediate commercial reasons to do so.

If you're in a service related industry - do you want staff coming to work if they are (or recently) suffering from digestive illnesses? How would an outbreak of people getting sick after being at your facility look? It could potentially result in very very bad publicity - to the point of destroying your business.

If you're running a smaller business / facility - do you want an employee coming in and spreading the illness to your other workers in the early stages of being sick (and then later taking time off)? This could result in your business lacking sufficient staff to open if you can't use labor hire staff.

The reason why it might be good for businesses to provide an incentive (like sick pay) not to work when sick is that it reduces the risk of negative outcomes to the business.

There is nothing unique about American businesses that means they cannot pay sick pay. In the UK there is mandatory minimum amount that must be paid an employee is off sick for more than 4 days. So how many low paying jobs the statutory minimum is what they will get but many employers will offer your full-time wages for a certain amount for example the first 15 days or 10 days of sick per year. However if you are long term sick then you will eventually end up on statutory sick pay. But even that is better than nothing. And you should remember the many American companies that operate in the UK also offer this to their employees. Of course perhaps that is offset somewhat by not having them pay healthcare insurance for their employees (although there is National Insurance to pay for the NHS)

That's what insurance is for.

> why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work?

Is it really such burden to the business owner to see to the well-being of their employees?

> At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.

I like this idea, tbqh.

Wages paid are deductible business expenses already.

> Wages paid are deductible business expenses already.

Up to how much? I can't imagine wages paid are 100% deductible. Otherwise nothing's stopping people from starting businesses and paying wages to friends to reduce tax burdens...

Up to any amount, provided they are: Ordinary and necessary, Reasonable in amount, Paid for services actually provided, Paid for or incurred in the tax year. And the "any amount" has a limit beyond which you are found to not be operating a profit-seeking business.

(Those are the fairly standard tests for all business deductions, only the third is at all specific to wages.)

There's no way to "make money" by incurring additional expenses and deducting them. If you have $100 in deductible business expenses and your marginal rate is 35%, you are paying $100 in expenses and getting back $35 on your taxes, so you're still out of pocket $65.

"There's [usually] no way"

It’s 100% deductible just like most other businesses expenses given you only pay taxes on net profits, if it weren’t tax deductible you would end up with a higher tax burden than what your business makes and therefore can pay.

Paying family/friends wages counts as a business expense to the company and taxable revenue to the employee. The business can also incur additional overheads for having employees like payroll taxes, super, etc.

Not trying to argue the other side, but there are people who claim to be sick when they just want to be paid to not work. So an ideal system should also deal with that possibility.

There is a limit around where I live here in Eastern Europe. 15 days per year but there are exceptions such as pregnancy and whatnot. Plus they abolished a particular law so now the employer can fire you while you are on sick pay.

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