Archive for July, 2010
Tom Harnish - July 29th, 2010
Scammers and spammers have a lot in common. They both want to rip us off, and they use similar techniques. They:
- Use scammy/spammy phrase, like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
- Go crazy with exclamation points!!!!!!
- USE ALL CAPS. ONLINE THAT”S THE SAME AS YELLING
- Color fonts bright red or green, and worse, making words flash or bounce
- Send an email that’s just one big image of text (spam filters can’t read images, so they try to sneak into your email in-box as a picture of their spiel).
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: If it’s spam, it’s a scam. But now we’ll add—And vice versus.
Tom Harnish - July 28th, 2010
A telecommuter, preparing lunch in her kitchen, was attacked by a neighbor. She claimed she was due workers’ compensation benefits for her injuries, but the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled otherwise. ”Generally, for an injury to ‘arise out of’ employment, it must emanate from a peculiar danger or risk inherent to the nature of the employment. Thus, ‘an injury purely coincidental, or contemporaneous, or collateral, with the employment . . . will not cause the injury . . . to be considered as arising out of the employment,’” the court said.
But other legal issues have to be decided as telecommuting becomes not just an HR perk but a mainstream corporate strategy. Tax, zoning, workers comp, licensing, OSHA, and fair labour laws all have gotchas in them that need to be ironed out. But it’s going to be a battle.
Hyans and Nogid, in “Telecommuting: Don’t Allow State Tax Issues to Disrupt the Connection“ (State Tax Notes, July 19, 2010) used some of our numbers on the growth in telecommuting, and noted,
“Despite the burgeoning telecommuting workforce in government and private industry, and the clear imperative supporting the institution of broad-based telework programs, state and local income tax laws and withholding tax provisions remain muddled and inconsistent and, when employers and employees are not careful, risk placing telecommuters and their employers at a considerable disadvantage from a state and local tax perspective.” (Emphasis ours.)
They warn that employers who allow employees to work at home in New Jersey, for example, are doing business in that state as far as the New Jersey Tax Court is concerned. And, they say, “…once a corporate toe has been dipped in state waters, it’s not just the toe that gets taxed.”
Employees can have problems too. Believe it or not, most states that have a personal income tax also think that even a single visit to the state by a nonresident is enough to require that employee to pay taxes in that state. While most states allow a credit for personal income taxes paid to another state, that credit mechanism has been found by the courts to not be required under the Constitution. Double taxation remains a problem, especially in the NE states.
Tom Harnish - July 27th, 2010
Long before we wrote Undress For Success: The Naked Truth About Making Money At Home, Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post wrote a column foreshadowing some of the problems we’ve had because of the racy title. The head of an all virtual accounting firm, for example, refused to be interviewed when he heard (gasp) the naked word. Didn’t want folks picturing his CPAs spreading sheets with nothing on but a green eye-shade, apparently. And some of you won’t be able to read this because the word naked appears several times. Raise your hand if you can’t read this*.
Weingarden mentions a study that showed, “…about 10 percent of American telecommuters acknowledge that they work naked. To extrapolate, right now as many as 150,000 federal workers might be naked, including, statistically speaking, Condoleezza Rice….The nakedness factor seems to add yet another wrinkle. As it were.”
He also observed, “When working naked, one tends to close all blinds and shutters, and generally transform oneself into a working wombat. However, during such stressful, high-stakes times one discovers that some areas of one’s home cannot be adequately shielded from outside view. In the instant case, this involved a front door with a glass panel that permits an unobstructed view of an area roughly two feet square at the top of the stairs to the basement. So if one is in the kitchen, naked, and the mailman rings the bell, and one’s bathrobe is downstairs, there is some peril in retrieving it, no matter how quickly one scampers.”
If all this talk of nakedness bothers you, just keep in mind that you’re naked too except for your clothes.
*Off topic, but related. A form just came in the mail from California’s Blue Cross company, Anthem. First line of the form reads, “IMPORTANT: Can you read this letter? If not, we can have someone help you read it.” Says the same thing in Spanish, and (I assume) Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
