from Hacker News

Tax working from home 'to support vulnerable jobs' – Deutsche Bank

by Johnjonjoan on 11/11/20, 4:18 AM with 192 comments

by kace91 on 11/11/20, 12:54 PM
This sounds like a horrible idea.
Home work improves many peoples mental state, reduces time spent at work (if you count commutes), people's footprint in terms of pollution and allow for the redistribution of people that were clustered in big cities under asfixiating rent/home owning costs. Why on earth would we disincentivize it?
>By working from home, people aren't paying for public transport or eating out at restaurants near their places of work, while expensive offices remain virtually empty.
Spending your money isn't an obligation as far as I'm aware. Should I be taxed for bringing my homecooked food to work then? What about walking to my workplace, or using a bike?
>"The virus has benefitted those who can do their jobs virtually, such as bank analysts, and threatened the livelihoods or health of those who can't," added Mr Templeman.
that one is reasonable until:
>It also wouldn't apply when people are asked to stay home for a public health emergency or other medical reasons.
So..the concern is that the virus hurts some workers, but it doesn't apply during times where workers are harmed?
by maxharris on 11/11/20, 4:33 AM
Instead of penalizing change, why not encourage it? When you work from home, you don't put anywhere near the carbon into the atmosphere that you would commuting. You also spend a lot less on lunch, and you don't need to put your children into state-run schools that are really there to function as daycare centers as much as they are to educate.
If all of that office space in downtown areas stays dark, and the zoning laws are altered or removed, it can be redeveloped into housing that's actually affordable.
We really are running into a wall on the methane crisis, and we we simply don't have the time to integrate these changes at a slower pace.
Let's focus on changing our regulations that prohibit building neighborhoods for pedestrians. Let's work on getting homes with solar roofs and big batteries. Let's get drone delivery everywhere. Let's electrify the transport system with electric cars, electric trucks, eVTOL aircraft. Let's tunnel underneath and between cities and connect them with hyperloops. Let's connect people in rural areas with low-cost, low-latency satellite internet access.
Doing these things will directly provide a great number of jobs for a great number of people. It will make a great number of new jobs possible. It will improve the natural environment. I think this is a much more positive direction to take than to try to slow things down.
by pydry on 11/11/20, 12:59 PM
Might Deutsche Bank be sitting on a non performing commercial real estate portfolio?
Alan Sugar (British Trump equivalent) similarly issued a demand for people to "get their asses back in the office" after telling everybody his commercial real estate portfolio wasn't performing: https://www.standard.co.uk/business/lord-sugar-offices-prope...
https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/03/lord-alan-sugar-calls-on-gove...
by varispeed on 11/11/20, 1:02 PM
The ideas are always around taxing the middle class, the hard working engineers, lawyers, doctors and sold to the masses as taxing "the rich", but in reality the rich never pay as much tax as middle class (as a proportion of income). Tax is often used as an instrument to discourage certain behaviour and this proposal seems to be also hitting engineers, but also people on lower income who for example assemble parts at home. It seems like the goal of DB is to discourage home working disguised as a help to those who cannot work from home. It's kind of "we know better than you what is good and you must obey or give us your hard earned money." Why people are not ashamed to put such proposals forward?
by 0xfaded on 11/11/20, 7:39 AM
Brilliant, a bank's own think tank suggesting we have additional taxes on labour because capital suddenly finds itself more efficient. Alternatively, how about an annual levy of 0.5% on all wealth, including bank balances?
I think there may be something else going on. "Essential" work has been allowed to continue, and "essential" had basically been defined as anything directly contributing to economic output.
Meanwhile, the productive desk jobs have moved to the home. This leaves two categories of jobs high and dry, the jobs maintaining the office building, and the bullshit jobs.
The problem is that the existence of bullshit jobs is part of the current deal, and estimates range from 40-50+% of how much work in a western economy is pointless. If the bullshit jobs disappear, it threatens that model and ultimately capital holders. The people may decide to tax capital!
by ThePhysicist on 11/11/20, 12:51 PM
Wow, so because I save myself and my employer money by not mindlessly commuting to work everyday I should pay an extra tax? That's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard so far.
It's a bit like taxing cyclists 10 % of their income because they don't support the car industry...
by aronpye on 11/11/20, 11:49 AM
Obviously have no evidence for this, but the cynical side of me thinks that this bank wants to destroy working from home in order to keep people going into the office so that companies keep paying for office space. That way banks with holdings in property, property insurance, mortgages, etc. don’t lose money on their investments.
There is close to zero chance a bank, the pinnacle of capitalist institutions, supports such an inherently socialist proposal such as wealth redistribution.
by amf12 on 11/11/20, 12:54 PM
It argues this is only fair, as those who work from home are saving money and not paying into the system like those who go out to work.
By working from home, people aren't paying for public transport or eating out at restaurants near their places of work, while expensive offices remain virtually empty.
This is a terrible argument that just makes a lot of assumptions without also considering the benefits. The main assumption being that "WFH" is a net drain on the local economy.
While yes, people working from home aren't paying for public transportation, or eating out every day - they are spending money other ways. For example people are using food delivery services, buying more grocery, moving to cheaper COL areas thereby supporting a local economy somewhere else. They are buying better homes or furniture or equipment, etc. We need to understand better the complete impact on the economy to determine the net gain or loss.
by kenned3 on 11/11/20, 12:50 PM
Even better - Tax bank executives who earn more the first day of the year then the average bank employee will earn all year?
by agustif on 11/11/20, 10:53 AM
Deutshe Bank was in top of the list of another article that hit the homepage today, about massive international money laundering... (2Trillion) [1]
I wonder how companies are so amazing that feel they can do such evil shit with one face, and then turn with another and tell people they need to pay more taxes...
I mean LOL
[1](https://medium.com/technicity/big-banks-are-at-the-front-cen...)
by TheOperator on 11/11/20, 4:58 AM
Working in an office should be taxed to mitigate the environmental cost of such a high carbon lifestyle. Why would we tax people for avoiding paying the carbon taxes associated with the office lifestyle?
by Silhouette on 11/11/20, 11:03 AM
What a bizarre suggestion.
People working from home save their employers money through reduced need for space, services and consumables at offices or other business premises.
They make lesser demands of public facilities, notably reducing the load on overcrowded transport infrastructure and so improving efficiency, the environment and, particularly at the current time, the health and safety of those who do still need to travel.
They support local businesses in the areas around their homes.
Their own quality of life may be qualitatively improved, not least by getting back several hours every week that is no longer wasted on commuting. This has obvious benefits including greater personal productivity, better mental health and providing more family time for parents and children during the week.
And as a secondary benefit, forcing businesses to accept more remote working might undermine long-standing toxic practices and presenteeism culture imposed by bad management, further improving both business productivity and personal quality of life for many.
We shouldn't be taxing working from home (or working closer to home instead of in distant facilities). If anything, we should be incentivizing this shift in our way of life, and we should be adapting our planning and infrastructure policies to support doing more of it in the future for those who can and want to. That could mean anything from just allowing more small business premises within predominantly residential areas where their services are likely to be needed right up to creating local business hubs where people can set up to work, access shared facilities and enjoy some personal contact if they don't have good facilities to work literally at their own home or they prefer a more social work environment.
We're definitely going to have some big bills to pay after the coronavirus problem has been mitigated, but I can think of a lot of more reasonable ways to generate extra revenue on the required scale than this. How about some real international collaboration to establish transaction taxes on multinationals that make huge amounts of money largely by moving money and/or personal data around with little evidence of any wider societal benefit from their activities, for a start?
by tonyedgecombe on 11/11/20, 6:16 AM
There will be a bill to pay for lockdowns and I expect tax rises are looming but this policy is bonkers.
If some jobs have become zombified because working practices have changed then those jobs need to go. We should support those people through the transition but trying to prop up unviable businesses isn't a sensible policy.
Coming out of this period should be a period of creative destruction but it seems to me current politicians don't have the backbone for it.
by Traster on 11/11/20, 12:52 PM
>Economists at Deutsche Bank suggest a tax of 5% of a worker's salary if they choose to work from home.
>The tax would be paid for by employers and the income generated would be paid to people who can't do their jobs from home.
That's what we want. We want to give people an economic incentive to go out and mix with people in the middle of a pandemic.
I'm working from home right now, but if you told me 5% of my pay would be taxed because of it I'd be back in the office like a shot.
>In the UK, Deutsche Bank calculates the tax would generate a pot of £6.9bn a year, which could pay
...For the massive cost of a huge wave of COVID caused by office workers who have been forced back into central london via public transport.
by svrtknst on 11/11/20, 12:54 PM
Counterpoint: Tax employers additionally, since they now face lower rent and spend less on office supplies and coffee.
Or, hell, tax high-income earners. For instance bank executives working for shady banks
by holstvoogd on 11/11/20, 12:57 PM
Deutsche Bank can fuck right of and come back once they start paying taxes and stop laundering money for the rich.
Fuck everything about this.
by systematical on 11/11/20, 5:04 AM
Tax the rich not the workers. While I realize the article says it will be paid by employers, that will be turned on us.
by amadeuspagel on 11/11/20, 1:09 PM
I cringe every time I see a plan of the form "tax x to help y", with some supposed relation between x and y as justification. Is x something we want to discourage? Does y need help the most? These questions are completely unrelated. If x is something we want to discourage, we should tax it, then think about how to best spend the money. If y needs help the most we should help, then think about whether to spend less on other things, raise taxes or go further into debt.
by johnchristopher on 11/11/20, 1:38 PM
My first gut reaction is/was: “Wait what no I lost my job in march due to political shenanigans in civil/public agency, got out with server bouts of panic attack, 60 pounds heavier and lifeless, I managed to get re-hired in a fucking pandemic and you want to tax me more because you wasted some of the money you already took from me in policies that didn't replenish masks and respirators stock and I hear stock markets are skyrocketing and Bezos&co are richer than before the crisis and you want to tax the people who are keeping their head out of the water instead of going for once after the so-symbolic GAFA and others and the Deutsche Bank's plan is tax me more instead of helping fight global financial fraud ?! The Deutsche Bank ? On a BBC website, from a country that first denied covid then went the herd immunity foolish path ? Give them more money to build such plans ? To the people who brought us Brexit ?!" /s
I need to calm down a bit before reading the article :D but at least you have the gut/first reaction of a random joe to reading such headlines.
by m000 on 11/11/20, 12:48 PM
Why not "tax people with a lot of money, to help pay those who do not"?
by jusssi on 11/11/20, 1:31 PM
A free market solution would be to make commute time paid (maybe to some reasonable maximum e.g. 1h per direction).
So instead of companies forcing their employees to come to the office so they don't get slapped with a penalty tax, they'd be actively participating in optimizing commutes. And it would similarly support those workers who have no option.
by ShaneMcGowan on 11/11/20, 1:09 PM
One could argue that since these services are no longer needed or as heavily utilized due to people being able to work from home, then the service as is isn't feasible anymore and will need to change, rather than taxing those who are no longer interested in partaking in this service.
by jt2190 on 11/11/20, 12:52 PM
To put some context on this, this is a “think piece”, not an official position of a large multi-national bank:
> Deutsche Bank says its research is designed to spark debate around a series of important topics.
> Report author Mr Templeman said he'd had a lot of feedback on the report. "A lot of people aren't impressed at the idea of another tax, however, some have seen it as an interesting policy that governments can use to redistribute some of the gains from the pandemic which have been unexpectedly accrued by some people while others have lost out."
by fiftyacorn on 11/11/20, 1:01 PM
We should also tax people who bring there lunch or coffee to work depriving sandwich and coffee shops a sale
by neilwilson on 11/11/20, 1:54 PM
Of course if we removed the "but what about the jobs, can I have a bailout" option then firms would have to get back to competing for business rather than bailouts.
We need an alternative job that people always have the option to take. No need to tax anybody to create that
New paper on the approach today: http://www.fullemployment.net/publications/wp/2020/wp_20_06....
by karolkozub on 11/11/20, 1:19 PM
Taxes have many purposes, and one of them is incentivizing preferred behaviors. Why should we discourage working from home? Is wasting a significant part of your life commuting to work really that good for the society? It's certainly not for the environment.
Also, there are many hidden drawbacks of working from home – it's more socially isolating, the work-life balance suffers, setting up a home office may be costly. I can imagine such a tax making working from home not worth it for lots of people.
by unglaublich on 11/11/20, 4:25 PM
This is absurd. Not having to take public transport and not eating in restaurants is considered a 'unfair financial benefit'? People that don't use those facilities have to pay for those that have? How is this different from people that work in expensive and cheap neighborhood? Why don't we all contribute to the expensive lives of people in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and New York because it's unfair that the rest of the world lives so cheap?
by another-dave on 11/11/20, 1:42 PM
> By working from home, people aren't paying for public transport or eating out at restaurants near their places of work, while expensive offices remain virtually empty.
If there's a large-scale shift to working from home, I'd imagine you'd see an eventual rebalancing of cities & suburbans in both directions:
— more cafés and restaurants in suburban commuter towns or residential areas that were previously ghost towns during the day. (Personally, if there were more cafés and restaurants around my home (and we weren't in the middle of a lockdown) I'd be happy to frequent those while WFH to get out of the house & as a change of scene.)
— if offices do end up vacant longer-term, a conversion of some of this 'down town' space to residential.
In the interim, you'd probably want to support people and businesses along the way, but I don't think introducing taxes to chivvy people back to the existing (old?) status quo is the way forward out of all this. This could be an opportunity to make city centres a lot more livable.
On the issue of public transport — at least here in London, the network was struggling for funding even before the pandemic nevermind now. I think it's time to bite the bullet and make public transport free at the point of use — I'd happily pay an extra tax for that and would go some way to reducing day-to-day expenditure of people who depend on it most. Plus (again, when we're back to normal), it may encourage more people to reduce single-passenger car use if they're already paying for the train/bus.
by damnencryption on 11/11/20, 1:11 PM
I propose to tax workers who are commuting to work but aren't required to for their job and causing increase in pollution.
by dasKrokodil on 11/12/20, 3:40 PM
How is that supposed to be fair? Working from home, I now have to pay for the energy consumed by my work computer out of my own pocket, I have to have a desk which consumes precious space in my expensive apartment and nobody is compensating me for any of that. And now this shady institution wants me to pay an extra tax on top of that?
by darkerside on 11/11/20, 1:04 PM
The macroeconomics of this make sense, but the behavioral impacts of this could be damaging. For that reason, I'd rather see this framed as a tax credit for essential workers. It ends up being similar, but framed as a positive reinforcement instead of a negative punishment.
by 627467 on 11/11/20, 1:30 PM
So, if I choose to work in the office because I prefer and not because I don't have a choice I still benefit from someone who has no choice but work remotely?
Who pays for bills incurred due to working from home?
I can sort see this being a temporary tax on exceptional circumstances (such as public health crisis that halts work for those non-remote) but the proposal explicitly excludes this.
As a permanent tax this only sounds like a tax to make employees (since self-employed won't be taxed) pay for a hypothetical change in paradigm of how people work. Society has been investing in a model (expensive centralized infrastructure for on-site work) that is become obsolete and to sustain this obsolete model they propose to make employees pay for the transition.
by raxxorrax on 11/12/20, 10:58 AM
We actually produce hardware locally and employees in production cannot just stay at home. Same is true for a lot of other industries, so it is unfair to a degree.
That said, Germany isn't exactly a tax haven and I wouldn't agree to a tax increase if it isn't for directly supporting business currently affected by the pandemic (it will be a very large invoice...)
Businesses not affected by the pandemic: Deutsche Bank
Get the financial transaction tax and it would end a lot of useless transactions immediately and would maybe end some parasitic industries. It is also unlikely to hit people in precarious positions.
by yoz-y on 11/11/20, 1:14 PM
People who can work and kept their jobs already pay more taxes than people who couldn't and lost their jobs. I'm not against supporting people who find themselves in dire straits. But that is already happening.
by vfclists on 11/11/20, 8:23 PM
> "For years we have needed a tax on remote workers," wrote Deutsche Bank strategist Luke Templeman. "Covid has just made it obvious."
The chutzpah of these turds is unbelievable.
"For years we have need a tax on TBTF banks, their traders, their bosses, their board members, their speculators, and the taxes and bonds raised them to bail them of their losses, their bankruptcies, and their assholery." "Covid has just made it obvious".
Why don't we start on a 45% tax on the salaries of Deutsche Bank employees who can work from home but refuse to.
by flashyfaffe2 on 11/11/20, 2:17 PM
Its quite unusual to have so witty comments on this forum.
I believe a lot have been said here and it reveals how the so called economist at DB thinks.
On my side,I would just like to add a reference to F.Bastia
And its well known sophism:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/frederic-bastiat.asp#:~....
by jacknews on 11/11/20, 3:08 PM
We should tax the banks more.
Because their business model is so intimately tied to state power, they're not really just a business, like others. They're able to create fractional money on which they charge interest, customer deposits are state-insured, even they are almost always first in line for bailouts and other special treatment in challenging times. They can also quite clearly afford to pay more.
by martimarkov on 11/11/20, 1:29 PM
By the same logic in the article I think we should tax electric cars and bikes as ppl using them save more money than those driving petrol ones.
by alanfranz on 11/11/20, 1:52 PM
Please note that Deutsche Bank is NOT the Bundesbank - i.e. it's not Germany's FED. It's just another bank.
by valdask on 11/16/20, 8:07 AM
The only way this could make sense if business increased wages by 5% for remote workers, so they don't have to rent such large offices etc and still get all this manpower.
by tehjoker on 11/11/20, 4:59 AM
How on Earth would that help? Maybe printing money, taxing the unearthly wealth of the largest corporations that currently pay $0 or negative taxes (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, many others), and giving a federal job guarantee or some mix thereof would be better?
Adding a tax on specific behaviors will just cause these $0 paying corporations to shuffle various activities around to come out paying $0 or less.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/why-amazon-paid-no-federal-i...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/amazon-had-to-pay-federal-in... ($162 million tax bill after 2 years of $0)
https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/02/13/netflix-tax-law/
by mkuklik on 11/13/20, 1:50 AM
Such tax has a distribution effects similar to universal income but with tons of distortions. This tax will have effect on people's decisions to work from home. Why not just pay for it with higher progressive income tax.
by White_Wolf on 11/11/20, 10:20 PM
huh? by the same logic:
Should we put an extra tax "at source" for - online shopping to support high street retailers ? - electric car manufacturers to support the oil industry? - all renewable energy companies to support coal mines?
There do you draw the line then?
by mkuklik on 11/13/20, 1:49 AM
Distribution effects similar to universal income but with tons of distortions. This tax will have effect on people's decisions to work from home. Why not just pay for it with higher progressive income tax.
by layoutIfNeeded on 11/11/20, 1:00 PM
Yeah, no, fuck off Deutsche Bank. How would they track if I'm working from home anyway?
by just-juan-post on 11/11/20, 5:15 AM
OR...end the lockdowns and lifestyle restrictions so there are no "vulnerable jobs" to this virus that has a 0.13% IFR [1]. Human choices by governments are both creating the problem and providing solutions to the problem.
“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.” ― Harry Browne
Remote workers you get to pay for the crutch.
[1] Oct 05 WHO announces 750m cases and on that day there were ~1m fatailities. 1m / 750m = 0.0013 = 0.13% IFR ( end of article here https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nyc-ebola-doctor... )
by say_it_as_it_is on 11/11/20, 10:56 AM
Tax financial transactions, even a little bit, and that ought to help fund UBI.
by alexellisuk on 11/12/20, 10:04 AM
I find this utterly ridiculous. It sounds like it's rooted in old-school management trying to carrot/stick employees back into the office.
by fred_is_fred on 11/11/20, 11:45 PM
Instead we could tax money laundering and loans to tinpot despots - but that might hit Deutsche a bit close to home.
by olliej on 11/11/20, 11:42 PM
Or, bare with me (bear? beer? bayer?), tax high income people and businesses properly?
by samoa42 on 11/11/20, 1:33 PM
i would be more inclined to reestablish progressive income tax.
there are very few convincing reasons why anybody has earned 100x more than someone at the low end.
by dr_win on 11/11/20, 8:54 PM
Has anybody a link to the actual research paper?
by qz2 on 11/11/20, 1:05 PM
Pay people who can't more, then tax them.
by dotdi on 11/11/20, 1:08 PM
This reminds me of Shell (the oil giant, who had allegedly known for decades that they are pushing towards an environmental catastrophe but hid it actively for $$$) tweeting
> What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions? #EnergyDebate
I'm going to sound like a total commie, which I'm not, but when are people going to get fed up with companies/persons earning billions telling us that WE need to be paid less so that THEY don't loose money or are paid more.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
by EQYV on 11/11/20, 1:15 PM
Yeah, no.
by apta on 11/11/20, 5:35 PM
Let's not give these socialist policies any weight. They're destructive and virtue signaling and very short sighted.
by Longlius on 11/11/20, 12:59 PM
Germany continues its war on the self-employed.