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Comment by mikhailfranco | Hacker News Reader

Is there a carbon credit for that?

If not, there should be a tax on employers for RTO, in the cause of realizing externalities.

Public companies will be required to report their carbon emissions as part of new SEC rules. Perhaps this could be reported to the SEC if they don't report these emissions? Sounds like securities fraud to me if they don't (hat tip to Matt Levine's "Everything is securities fraud" series).

Buy some shares, get some standing, spin up the legal apparatus. Not legal advice.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-46

> The proposed rules also would require a registrant to disclose information about its direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions from purchased electricity or other forms of energy (Scope 2). In addition, a registrant would be required to disclose GHG emissions from upstream and downstream activities in its value chain (Scope 3), if material or if the registrant has set a GHG emissions target or goal that includes Scope 3 emissions. These proposals for GHG emissions disclosures would provide investors with decision-useful information to assess a registrant’s exposure to, and management of, climate-related risks, and in particular transition risks. The proposed rules would provide a safe harbor for liability from Scope 3 emissions disclosure and an exemption from the Scope 3 emissions disclosure requirement for smaller reporting companies. The proposed disclosures are similar to those that many companies already provide based on broadly accepted disclosure frameworks, such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Credits should be for actually removing carbon. Credits for this devolve really quickly into giving people credits because they bought a sedan instead of a truck. Tax emissions, credit removal. Less tax is its own reward.

There never was a tax to begin with, in fact there is the opposite (tax credits) in a lot of America if a business decides to open up a shiny new $200 million concrete jungle and forces employees to commute in.

Tax credits for what exactly?

For bringing business to the community. People will move to live close to the office, the company itself pays taxes in the future to the township, more traffic = more opportunities for small business. It's generally seen as healthy for an economy, but the huge downside is the environmental externalities are completely ignored.

Depending on the community, they may be required to do an environmental study which does...many things that I'm not familiar with. All I know is a lot of new buildings in my area come with lots of green space and solar panels over parking lots. And probably other green things.

One of my favorite examples: my Dad worked at a F100 company, and they moved a large group of employees to a new office building. That office building was taxed in a special "opportunity zone" that gave the employer tax credits while the employees got stuck with a new higher local income tax.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the worker should be given incentives to bring their income to an area. This allows a community to diversify economically, vs handouts to large corporations who will continually wield their business contributions against a jurisdiction to continue to obtain substantial tax breaks or other economic concessions, and when they finally leave, they do substantial harm to the community.

As a community, you then cater to workers to draw and keep them there (not maliciously, simply providing high quality of life like a community should), and they will continue to contribute to the community by way of their spending from income (on taxes and consumption) for their productive lifespan.

> Fundamentally, the problem is that the worker should be given incentives to bring their income to an area

This can be done naturally, if local government intervention is low, so there's more money for local businesses to spend, or unnaturally, if local government intervention is high, so local businesses have less decision power, and the local government spends that money on infrastructure for companies coming in who pay less tax.

I understand how it works but it just seems a zero sum game. When someone moves from city A to city B, it's more tax for city B but less for A, and it often happens in one direction than the other. Same for companies. Reminds me of the silly and meaningless "border war" between Missouri and Kansas.

Typically cities A and B fall under different local governments (states or counties or whatever), making it not zero sum for the government of city B to attract the business.

> I understand how it works but it just seems a zero sum game.

Not necessarily, most companies are growing and building new offices in addition to existing ones.

It would be far, far more direct to just have a carbon tax.

You realize the effect would be to drive businesses out to foreign jurisdictions that don't have that carbon tax.

Tariffs on goods that originate from countries that don't properly account for this externality.

If a country doesn't want to collect it from their domestic producers, we'll handle it on our end. Companies offshoring production to avoid the carbon tax will be a no-op.

Same with VAT really. Yet some business just stay there.

The tax is typically on fuel, which employees pay for. In theory this ought to filter through to employers who may well end up having to pay more for in-office employees to cover the extra costs. Whether that plays out in practice I'm not sure.

Companies should be taxed MORE for having people work in an office?

Yes. They are causing negative externalities without exposure to the costs. Why would we collectively not force them to internalize the costs of their requirements? Pay up.

Tangentially, it is sort of fun to potentially wield capitalist economic mechanisms against poor human decisions powered by hierarchical social power structures causing detriment to physical systems. Not all hacks require code (although, one could consider statute and executive branch rule making a form of code processed by the legal system I suppose).

They pay them by paying their employees, who pay for transport.

…but not the pollution, road maintenance due to extra wear, fuel economy stagnation, etc.

That is what gp was referring to: externalities, which you don't directly pay for

Gas tax and car registrations cover a fair amount of what you're talking about.

I've got some bad news for you about the gas tax for repairs; at least on US Interstate highways.

> (2021) The transit and highway accounts are projected to have a shortfall of $207B over the next 10 years

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/its-been-28-years-since-we...

> The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $2.5 trillion within a decade.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-gas-taxs-tortured-...

Blame the people who should be setting the and spending taxes correctly for that one.

I don't think a tax like this would have the intention you think. It would likely increase outsourcing, massively benefit large corporations who can afford to absorb the fees (and have better accountants/lawyers compared to startups), destroy the tax base of cities (after the companies flee to business friendly states), shut down tons of small business that rely on commuters/workers (like restaurants, bars, cleaning staff, etc). Believe it or not, many people like to see their co-workers daily and don't view going to an office as a crime against humanity. This forum skews heavily towards the opposite view obviously.

Either pay for the climate damage you cause or don't cause it. If tariffs are needed to avoid using outsourcing to evade the spirit of the law, implement them. No freeloading, no papering over unsustainable systems. If city tax bases crumble, so be it. If small businesses fail, that is what one would expect in a dynamic, constantly changing economic system when the system changes.

> Believe it or not, many people like to see their co-workers daily and don't view going to an office as a crime against humanity. This forum skews heavily towards the opposite view obviously.

I take no issue, just pay your fully loaded costs to have this experience. My work is an income, not my social life, so I cannot relate. Now if your argument instead is, "My in office work life is a core component of myself but I also don't want to pay for the externalities living this experience causes because I didn't have to previously," I do not have much sympathy.

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397751/returning-office-cur... ("Approximately 56% of full-time employees in the U.S. -- more than 70 million workers -- say their job can be done working remotely from home.")

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/real-estate/our-insights... ("Another of the survey’s revelations: when people have the chance to work flexibly, 87 percent of them take it.")

Meh, I think the jury is still out on the effectiveness of carbon credits/offsets. Its a new system and there's no way in telling if it will have its intended impact. Levying taxes and enacting policy is an inherently political game, and these solutions impact people TODAY. Most people would prefer to keep their quality of life high today, vs mitigating some potential risk 100s of years from now when they won't even be alive.

Why not? They pollute more because of this decision (assuming we're talking about a desk job of course)

Work at office: hundreds/thousands of multi-ton SUV's try to get to the same place at 9am and 5pm; parents are absent from their children and each other half the day; real estate values near offices spike insanely; if people commute by bus/train they have to sacrifice even more hours, and also, share space with crazies and you still have to move a massive amount of physical stuff around.

Work from home: some electrons & photons move.

Which one costs society more?

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