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Working from home (WFH) is such a privilege that you should actually pay more: that was the premise of a report by economists at Deutsche Bank, which caused a stir.
The researchers argued that the WFH will remain an integral part of the ‘new normal’ once the pandemic has passed, and that this poses a big problem for economies with long-established infrastructure built around working in the face of face. The answer: Remote workers should pay additional taxes to support the economy as a whole and those who cannot work from home.
“For years we have needed a tax on remote workers – COVID just made it obvious. Quite simply, our economic system is not designed to cope with people who can disconnect from society face to face, ”the report says. .
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has certainly accelerated the trend towards working from home, with governments ordering workers to stay put where possible. When the locks go away, a return to the office is unlikely to be full time or for everyone.
Economists argue for a relatively modest tax – perhaps $ 10 a day – to be paid by the remote worker, or by the employer if he does not provide staff with an office to go to.
There are many reasons to disagree with this proposal, not least because the idea of taxing people who work from home more, instead of going to the office and buying a sandwich at lunchtime, seems to be a challenge. It also raises many other questions.
Tax matters
If economic inactivity is the problem, should you be taxed more if you cycle to work with a packed lunch? Conversely, should you pay even less tax if you promise to drive a big car around town and have a long lunch every day at a restaurant?
And while many of those who can work from home would agree that frontline workers like nurses deserve better pay, it is highly unlikely that a government will block the money from a tax. the WFH for these workers. Instead, the proceeds would simply disappear into general expenses.
It is therefore very unlikely that a WFH tax will ever take off.
But that’s not really the point; instead, Deutsche Bank economists point out that if the bureau’s more than 100-year reign comes to an end, it will bring about big changes. Some we will see as positive, others less.
The most obvious changes will occur in city centers. Over the next few years, many organizations are likely to rethink how much office space they need, accelerating a trend that has been going on for some time.
But if office buildings no longer dominate the city, what will be their place? We could see emptiness and stagnation, or we could see people coming back to live in the commercial and commercial areas of cities, which are usually deserted outside of office hours. Bringing a community back to these cities could be a welcome development.
Some people will want to work from home, while others will just want to work closer to home.
This could mean an expansion of shared local offices in small towns or suburbs, where workers from different organizations can share a printer and chat with the coffee machine. This could invigorate local communities and reduce travel, and perhaps even favor local businesses over giant chains.
Some consequences are more difficult to measure.
If the WFH is here to stay – and it is – then we might see more people leaving the big cities, deciding that a better work-life balance is now possible. But there is already a growing battle over what this means for wages.
Many companies pay workers in large cities more because the cost of living is higher. What happens when staff can do the same job remotely from an area with a lower cost of living? Should they be paid less, even though they are doing the same job?
More broadly, if we all work from home more, there will be new personal challenges. If you never see your coworkers in the real world, what does this mean for teamwork and innovation? There is some evidence to suggest that while we are productive at home, we can be less innovative. Getting teams to work smarter and harder will be the new challenge for managers.
And for individuals, motivation and ambition can be difficult to maintain; it’s hard to demonstrate your skills to a manager you never see, so suddenly that promotion becomes much more difficult. Technology can help in some cases, just as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have kept people connected in recent months. But we will need ever better, even more attractive tools if the WFH is to truly function in the long term.
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated trends around work that have been building for years.
Navigating these changes, encouraging those we love and avoiding those we don’t like, is the truly nerve-racking challenge that awaits us.
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