Hacker News Reader

Comment by pseingatl | Hacker News Reader

There are problems with remote work. An employee of a California company is working remotely in, say, Illinois. He sits on his chair in the morning to do his regular work at his desk at home. The chair collapses; he is injured. He files for worker's compensation. His company paid no premiums in Illinois, no coverage. Will California cover an out of state injury? I don't know.

Second scenario. The California employee decides to work in Mumbai. Why not? Cost of living is lower and relatives are near. The employer then gets a tax bill because it is "doing business" in India. Or the ED VA. Or anywhere the employee decides to rent an apartment.

These issues have been put aside during the force majeure pandemic {in war and plagues the laws are silent, or at least, temporarily shut up} but a return to normalcy now means there is no more force majeure excuse.

View on HN

> The chair collapses; he is injured. He files for worker's compensation. His company paid no premiums in Illinois, no coverage. Will California cover an out of state injury?

This sounds so American: Insurance and litigation for every little thing.

Haha true. I thought the commenter was exaggerating first. But maybe commenter is really serious and literally means it.

So to his second point, does the employer get a tax bill because a worker is in a region? The employee might get an income tax bill in the region, and that seems to be the accepted norm. Maybe the company does get a bill.

If you have an hr dept that isn't worthless, they're already in compliance with whatever local state laws they need to in order to operate in that state, including workman's comp.

Remote work =/= work anywhere.

Companies can easily set policies to only allow work in jurisdictions they have tax and legal infrastructure to handle.

This isn't the same as requiring all your employees to come in the office.

> There are problems with remote work. An employee of a California company is working remotely in, say, Illinois. He sits on his chair in the morning to do his regular work at his desk at home. The chair collapses; he is injured. He files for worker's compensation. His company paid no premiums in Illinois, no coverage. Will California cover an out of state injury? I don't know.

It's almost as if no company ever in existence of the universe has had regional sales employees.

They do. And they have branch offices as well, even in other countries. They make the choice to establish such offices, form local companies to do so, qualify to do business in foreign jurisdictions, pay taxes, etc. The point is that it is the company making the business decision to do so, not random employees who decide they'd like to live in Kerala while earning US salaries.

Random employees don't get to make that decision in a WFH scenario either. They're hired while residing at a specific location. If they decide to move, they need to clear it with company HR first.

This is definitely an issue, but I don't think it's a serious concern for larger companies with good HR departments. When covid first hit HR at my employer was interested in where employees were located, there was a list of allowed work locations. But they got it figured out and physical location is less of an issue for tax and insurance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com