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Comment by powerslacker | Hacker News Reader

Very well written. Mirrors my own experiences with the California tax system as well.

> Congress needs to pass a law that says that hiring a remote employee in a particular state does not, by itself, create nexus for sales or corporate income tax purposes.

As far I understand, Congress does not have the authority to override the states in this way. I don't think it should either.

> stay out of California, and never hire anyone who lives there.

This is the correct way to deal with 'greedy states'. Don't give them the time of day.

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> As far I understand, Congress does not have the authority to override the states in this way.

Remote interstate hiring is obviously interstate commerce, and Congress has clear preemptive authority over that.

I suppose it could be, since the commerce clause is also routinely cited as justification for "war on drugs" type of efforts. However, I don't think it is as clear cut as you make it. A contract executed in one state is not automatically interstate simply because the parties to the contract reside or operate in different states. It matters where the contract is executed. A contract can state things like "will be judged in an XYZ court according to XYZ law".

Choice of laws clauses don't really impact whether commerce is interstate. If goods or services are crossing state lines, it is interstate commerce (and not in the fuzzy might-indirectly-impact sense of Wickard v. Filburn, though even that is settled law), regardless of whether there are choice of laws clauses in a contract governing the trade that specify a particular state laws.

Just because bits are travelling across the wire and the digital artifacts happen to stored in Kalamazoo does not mean services or goods have crossed state lines. Otherwise, using a telephone to talk to your employee or customer in another state would involve crossing state lines. That simply isn't the case in the normal course of business.

The fact that this conversation is this complex gives me a feeling that remote work is going to be the backdrop for a lot of court cases in the next decade.

> Just because bits are travelling across the wire and the digital artifacts happen to stored in Kalamazoo does not mean services or goods have crossed state lines.

Yes, it does.

> The fact that this conversation is this complex

I like that you not only inject false complexity into the conversation, but also pretend that that act is some kind of external fact that proves something about the underlying issue.

Bits travel one way, but dollars travel in the other. That's the distinction.

In what way are the states "greedy"? They're not hoarding the tax revenue. They're spending it on their citizens. Greed that is not. You may disagree with their allocation of tax revenue but calling it greedy is nonsense.

It's greed because the pain the cause with respect to compliance is not proportional to the amount of revenue they produce. They are willing to cause a lot of inefficiency in other states for a trifling amount of money.

The cost is $800, and the author probably spent tens of thousands of dollars in time and energy figuring out how or if they needed to pay it. That ratio is not a good tax system!

You think an $800 barrier to entry is a positive effect on small business in California? Do you think it's a positive effect on remote workers entertaining an out-of-state employer?

I don't think it's a good idea, I also don't think it's greedy. To be honest though, $800 for a business ain't really much.

I am quoting the author of the article.

That's fair I guess, I see your air-quotes now.

If you want to have employees in secondary jurisdictions without having to deal with the specifics of operating within them, you can hire folks through a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like Deel [1]. They'll take them on as full-time employees, pay benefits, handle paperwork - and assign them as full-time contractors to your business. No nexus for you, and full employment for the person working for you. It's not cheap, ofc, but hopefully your employee is generating sufficient value :)

[1] https://www.letsdeel.com/

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