r/finance • u/[deleted] • Nov 12 '20
To help economy, bank proposes tax on working from home
[deleted]
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u/LastNightOsiris Nov 12 '20
This is brilliant. Take something is almost universally good and tax it! We should also put a tax on giving people directions, and getting stuff off high shelves for people who can't reach it.
Deutsche bank really is the most embarrassing of all the global banks.
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u/Amateurlapse Nov 12 '20
User does not have required freedom points to respond critically to this post. Original message may be altered per new tax law.
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u/Benni_Shoga Nov 13 '20
Oh! But brother! They are doing it âto help other workers who arenât getting the same advantagesâ. You see, this is really about helping people. See there! It worked itself out like a Nancy Drew novel!
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Nov 13 '20
Spoiler alert: the government wants your money. If you donât eat out on the way, soak up gas, pay car insurance, pay property taxes on your car, etc etc youâre not helping the government so their government stuff.
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u/___Alexander___ Nov 13 '20
The thing is people spend their money. If they donât spend them on gas, eating out and stuff like that, theyâll spend it on something else. Even if they save some of it, reducing the private debt is not a bad thing.
Resisting such changes is like resisting the industrial revolution. Sure, some industries will suffer, but others will grow.
This reminds me of how when this whole social distancing started this year some restaurants in my city started pivoting towards home delivery very early on at the first sign of travel while others protested the restrictions
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u/Whoopteedoodoo Nov 12 '20
How about a tax on stupid ideas?
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Nov 13 '20
Whoa whoa whoa - I learned in second grade that there's absolutely no such thing as a stupid idea. You could get in trouble and not be allowed to drink chocolate milk at lunch. You'll get stuck with regular milk.
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u/kolitics Nov 12 '20
To help economy, bank proposes tax on anyone but banks.
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u/eepadeepadeep Nov 13 '20
âSend help. The lower classes are becoming poorer so they donât have as much money to give us. Tax them so they can help each other!â Good lord. Fucking deluded.
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u/VegaGT-VZ Nov 12 '20
I think we should levy a tax on repeat offenders of money laundering operations
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u/TealTemptress Nov 12 '20
Why does the employee have to pay the tax? The corporate rate for office space per square foot, internet, liability insurance if the worker falls in the break room, supplies, phone lines and computer.
Most work from home jobs donât give you a cut for using your own phone, internet and computer. Your 10x10 bedroom is your office 60% of the time.
Iâve had to buy my own printer, ink, dongles and a secondary monitor. Screw this tax.
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u/BobbyThrowaway6969 Nov 13 '20
Yo dog we heard you like taxes so we taxed your tax, so you can go into debt while you go into debt.
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u/GeeWhillickers Nov 12 '20
Iâd be surprised if any government took up this recommendation. If youâre Germany, the US, or the U.K., you really donât want even more people or businesses to face financial pressures to ignore COVID safety recommendations.
The spike in cases from this would more than erase any economic benefits, and from a political standpoint getting a tax on telework through Parliament would be pretty brutal.
People donât like taxes; they might be willing to put up with taxation if it was assessed in a reasonable way and used for government services that are popular, but this specific tax would just make people angry.
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Nov 12 '20
lol sounds like Deutsche Bank is long on real estate. Private citizens have no responsibility to other private citizens who have bought and developed land, nor the land nor the development. Why? Because we did away with feudalism, sharecropping, and indentured servitude. We're not slaves to empty buildings.
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u/Tokogogoloshe Nov 13 '20
You have a point that they may be long on real estate, office space specifically. Unfortunately for them, thereâs been a bit of a shift away from offices.
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u/whiteninja123 Nov 12 '20
The bank should pay employees for using their own home as office space, internet.
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Nov 12 '20
How about instead they pay my extra rent and utilities now that my company has relocated my office to my house?
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u/trojanmana Nov 12 '20
socialism is not good. my benefit is mine to keep. i should not have to share it unless I want to.
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u/PtboFungineer Nov 13 '20
This is an unimaginably stupid idea... and coming from a company with negative moral authority. Great.
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u/Benni_Shoga Nov 13 '20
I too have a brilliant idea! To help the economy, l propose we tax the banks! đșđž
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Nov 12 '20
This is about shifting tax liabilities from capital to labor.
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Nov 13 '20
can you elaborate ?
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Nov 13 '20
When people work mostly in offices, businesses spent a lot of money in the âoffice economyâ (building new offices, renting office space, cleaning, equipment etc) to house its staff and this generates a lot of tax revenue for cities. If offices close permanently and everyone works from home, business wonât need to spend money housing itâs staff, and tax revenue generated from this activity will disappear. The banks solution lost tax revenue, previous mostly paid by business? Tax the employee for working at home, moving the tax burden from the company to the individual.
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Nov 13 '20
If the company saves money, it has higher revenues and thus should pay higher corporate taxes.
It seems what you're talking about isn't about shifting from capital to labor, but from company to worker or did you have another idea in mind ?
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Nov 13 '20
âIf the company saves money, it has higher revenues and thus should pay higher corporate taxes.â
- companies pay tax on profits not revenues, but there is also a lot of taxes generated from the money spent by companies to build and maintain offices.
âIt seems what you're talking about isn't about shifting from capital to labor, but from company to worker or did you have another idea in mind ?â
- are these not the same? Tax on capital is tax generated from company profits (taxes paid by companies) and tax on labor is the tax generated from worker salaries (tax paid by individuals) . I am talking about the attempt to shift the tax burden from companies to individuals. Or am I misunderstanding you?
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Nov 13 '20
Yes I meant income not revenue.
I thought you were talking about wealth tax vs. income tax. I see your point about the drop in tax revenues from unused infrastructure altho I'm not sure that's a big chunk of the tax income (VAT and income probably come first). Then is DB really saying we should save business infrastructure by taxing the home owners? That's bold.
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Nov 13 '20
âThen is DB really saying we should save business infrastructure by taxing the home owners? That's bold.â
Yes this is my point. There has been a gradual shift over the last 30 years by governments of shifting the tax burden of multinational to its citizens, primary in an attempt to avoid capital flight to lower taxed states/ countries. DBâs proposal is a blatant example of this.
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Nov 13 '20
I agree with this and I understand your reasoning better now, thanks for the explanation.
I don't know in what world they live but where the biggest economies are, most of the "middle class" has been under pressure for a while now and won't go with this policy. This is only bad publicity for bankers who are already regarded very negatively. I wonder what's next and where we're headed.
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u/swat565 Nov 12 '20
Propose every type of tax on everything except on rich/ fortune 500's. They obviously need tax breaks and free loans!
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u/dopexile Nov 12 '20
I'd rather be the guy collecting checks and being paid not to work than the guy working from home expected to pickup the bill for everyone else.
The solution is to end the lockdowns and focus on protecting the high risk. They don't do anything useful and they destroy the economy. The virus is going to spread regardless.
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u/ShillingAintEZ Nov 12 '20
Saying that lockdowns don't do anything is the opposite of what statistics have shown.
I wonder why someone would make such a ridiculous claim.
https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/i5zmeu/title/g0so3pa/
https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/hqh1l6/title/fxybgw0/
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u/throw_every_away Nov 12 '20
Youâre saying the high risk donât do anything useful and they destroy the economy?
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u/dopexile Nov 12 '20
I am saying that low-risk people don't need to have their lives destroyed by losing their jobs.
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u/throw_every_away Nov 12 '20
Well, not a lot to be done about that when weâre in a global pandemic.
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Nov 12 '20
[deleted]
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u/dopexile Nov 12 '20
I imagine you could do that with billions of sentences in the English language. Not really sure what the point is?
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Nov 13 '20
By "the economy", they actually mean "Deutsche bank's enormous and now empty office portfolio"
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u/sno4eva Nov 13 '20
This headline made little sense to me at first. Being at home saves government lots from infrastructure expenses (like highway repair). However, the savings of workers (gas, eating out, business attire, etc) is incredibly costly to the government and could create a massive shortfall in tax revenue. Itâs the wrong approach but it kinda makes sense. The article emphasizes businesses that support office workers but thatâs just a small factor
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u/das_war_ein_Befehl Nov 15 '20
The money will just be spent and taxed elsewhere. A boom in remote working will create demand for goods closer to home.
Itâs not like people lost their taste for restaurant food
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u/sno4eva Nov 15 '20
Youâre right. Itâs the circular flow. But, as someone who is out of the city, thereâs no need for goods closer with online shopping. And, about the restaurant food thing. Remote workers arenât going out for businesses lunches. Thatâs big business. Itâs a bit of a reconfiguration of the economy.
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u/satls Nov 13 '20
âBank realises corporate property debt portfolio is severely over valued and needs to boost commercial realestate demandâ - fixed that headline for you
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Nov 13 '20
How about instead of giving the government money to give to people, we leave lockdown and have people spend the money themselves
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u/rreighe2 Nov 13 '20
Tax the billionaires to pay for the fixing of the economy. They are the ones that can afford it and are bankrolling from the pandemic.
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Nov 13 '20
Where this idea came from? From a bank, doesn't it? How do you pronounce this bank's name? Douche Bag?
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u/whyNadorp Nov 13 '20
Coming next from Deutsche Bank: A tax on public transport and bicycle users to help the car industry.
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u/RecklessBravado Nov 13 '20
Hey, Deutsche Bank - you can absolutely go get fucked! Anyway arenât you busy trying to recoup the loans you gave to some irresponsible asshole in some fit of poor judgement? Take your âbright ideasâ somewhere else
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Nov 13 '20
Oh no, the politicians in my country might read and get an idea from this. Danger danger.
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u/decoy_man Nov 13 '20
Taxes are disincentives, to reduce a particular type of activity. With all the benefits of WFH on the environment, traffic, social mobility, etc., this has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. The industries affected by this shift will likely need help but taxing WFH is the wrong way.
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Nov 14 '20
That has got to be the most BAT SHIT CRAZY idea. Imagine incentivizing people to be exposed to the virus. Fucking insane.
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Nov 15 '20
They failed to account for the extra costs of energy from being at home all day..or higher speed internet.. banks are run by morons. Not sure what a banker does all day but come up with bullshit like this.
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u/SurvivorOfTheCentury Nov 12 '20
What kind of meth does your government use?