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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

Personally I'm curious about how they have rights to even know where you are at any given time.

If you're an in-office employee, your responsibilities are (a) show up at the expected work hours (b) get your tasks done.

If you're defined as a fully remote employee, your responsibilities are (a) be online and available at the expected work hours (b) get your tasks done.

Besides that you're just an amorphous black box, a person that has been placed in the cloud, much like a website placed on Cloudflare, where the input is money and the output is work. They don't need to know where you are, and I'd say they shouldn't even have a right to know -- that would be quite stalkerish, IMO. All that's really important is that this black box gets tasks done.

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You can't just legally avoid taxes by not letting your employer know. Sure, they prob won't know and you'll get away with it, but you're technically breaking the law and an employer won't knowingly condone that.

So it's not that they have a right to know where you are, it's that if they do notice and not act on it that's a legal risk to them as well since they're enabling it. (IANAL but this feels common sense.)

I wasn't saying avoid taxes -- mostly just that the "90 day" thing is nonsense, because if you're a remote employee, you're effectively just a really intelligent amoeba on the face of the Earth without a well-defined location.

Pay your taxes, but if you say 153 days in Thailand or wherever you can get a long enough tourist visa, and use a VPN to the US and get your work done, I'm not sure why anyone would, should, or even has a right to care.

Thailand has a right to care. You're earning money and not paying taxes to their roads, police, fire department, etc—all the things govt provides. When you're a true tourist, you are likely making up for this by boosting the local economy.

Usually by being someone with money and spending it on rent, food, etc. you're already making up for this.

Countries with tourist visa stay limits are usually just to make sure you have the funds to leave. In general, if you come back the next day on another flight, with the intention of continuing to stay and spend money, they'll generally have no problem with it.

The company cares because they have legal obligations as well. Just because you pay for you taxes doesn't mean the employer is in compliance. Just like the US, many employers are obligated to pay additional fee/taxes/payments such as social security etc.

Why do you think you have the right to just settle in other people's countries and ignore their laws (on taxes and other things)?

The simple answer is to do away with the notion that earning income should be taxable. Tax on the consumption side, it's easier to enforce and harder to avoid.

That would be simple if AirBnB wrote the law. But sadly, they aren’t.

The problem with taxing consumption is that it's pretty regressive. Not to say that there aren't solutions, but the existing sales tax, gas tax, etc aren't it.

Taxing consumption instead of investments and savings seems like it would guide society more towards saving and investment instead of short-term consumption, though, no? Personally I'd rather not have taxes at all, but if you forced me to pick on of the three I'd pick consumption every time.

how do you want to pay for roads?

A congestion tax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_pricing#Impact

Tolls. Privatize the roads.

It’s funny how anti government people tend to like socialised roads, police and military, but the socialised education and housing.

Really depends on the person. I'm for privatizing all those things. No public spending on education, housing, roads, police, or military. Minarchists tend to prefer some services while anarchists may not want any government at all, thus no government expenditures.

Taxing income is also regressive because most rich people have trust funds (and pay a flat 15% tax) or push luxury purchases under the guise of business expenses (and pay no tax).

Because the black box for legal purposes still presumes you are in-office. When you are remote, you are structured as working from your "home office" not anywhere.

Hm. What if my home office was a van, or a private jet?

Couldn't one just structure it as a consultancy? I mean, if I hire a consultant to do something for me, I could just pay them through PayPal or Venmo or even Ethereum and wouldn't need to know where their office is. Onus is on them to be legally able to work and pay their taxes.

That works because it’s a 1099 situation. But FICA, tax withholding and health care benefits are all tied up in your place of residence. Assuming you have a driver’s license and a voters registration, there is someplace you call home otherwise you are just a hobo

Hm. So what legal framework do "hobos" use?

Surely it's not illegal to be homeless with a lot of money and skills.

(a) Let's say you spend 1 week in each state for 50 weeks of the year. Where do you file your taxes?

(b) Let's say you spend 1 week in each of 50 countries and work for AirBNB. You have no house, and no lease on a residence. Let's say it's mutual, e.g. you want to do this, and from their perspective, it's helping them because you're dogfooding their product. How do you deal with the legal side of it?

The government generally doesn't recognize having no fixed address whatsoever. I was caught 20 miles from the nearest road once 'illegally existing' in a wilderness area in Oregon 'without a permit.' The officer of course had nowhere to take me because there was no prison or way to extract me out, we literally randomly found each other on a mountain. When I told him I had no address he literally had no way to enter that on his form. He told me it was impossible and he had to put _something_. I'm not sure what he ultimately wrote. Of course he let me go, because what the hell are you going to do someone 20 miles from the nearest road short of calling a helicopter.

Having no address makes the government's brain explode.

wrt a.

My understanding is that it's not illegal but it basically makes it impossible to get government-issued ID, file taxes (which are legally required), open a bank account, get a credit card, etc.

So as a practical matter you probably get some traveling mailbox type service--in a state with no income tax presumably.

wrt b.

You're already a citizen somewhere. You'll still need an address there. See above. Then it's up to you and, perhaps to some degree, your employer to get appropriate visas. That said, for one week stays, an Airbnb stay during which you work an unknown amount of time remotely as opposed to being a tourist seems pretty doable so long as you keep a low profile and the company is cool with it.

Look at California residency requirements. They don't care if you're out of state for most of the year. If your license is from CA, or maybe you vote there, or you opened a bank account years back in CA, they will send you a tax bill.

And your home address is going to determine your default state/local tax situation in the US. (Though above certain thresholds you may be supposed to file multiple state taxes that are reconciled with each other. This mostly comes into play with business travel which companies are tracking.)

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