from: State Tax Notes 
STATE TAX NOTES Special Reports
State Tax Notes, Nov. 1, 2004, p. 319
34 State Tax Notes 319 (Nov. 1, 2004)
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Put the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act in the Passing Lane
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by Nicole Belson Goluboff
Nicole Belson Goluboff is a lawyer specializing in the legal implications of telework. She ia a member of the Advisory Board of The Telework Coalition and the author of The Law of Telecommuting (ALI-ABA 2001, with 2004 Supplement).
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In September, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., introduced in their respective houses "The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2004."1 This legislation offers important protection for thousands of American workers who telecommute to businesses located outside their states of residence.
"The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act" is intended to correct the adverse effects of a state personal income tax rule known as the "convenience of the employer" rule. This rule, maintained by New York2 and a number of other states,3 imposes a tax penalty on some interstate telecommuters. It is an economic deterrent to telework that Congress must remove.
I. New York's 'Convenience of the Employer' Rule
Under the convenience rule as applied by New York, if a nonresident elects to telecommute some of the time to a New York employer, New York will tax the telecommuter on 100 percent of his or her salary income, including the income the telecommuter earned while working at home; New York regards the income earned outside New York as New York-source income. Because the telecommuter's home state may not agree that the income earned at home is New York-source income, the home state may also tax that income without offering a credit for the taxes New York assessed. Thus, the employee may have to pay taxes to both states on the same income.
If the telework arrangement is an employer necessity, rather than a choice the employee made for personal convenience, New York will tax the telecommuter only on the income the employee earned while physically in New York and allow the telecommuter to source the income earned at home to the home state. However, New York rarely considers telework an employer necessity. Indeed, the state may refuse to regard a telework arrangement as necessary even when the employer requires the employee to telecommute and removes his or her office space. In New York's view, telework is necessary only if the nature of the work is such that it could not possibly be done in New York.4
II. Some Illogical Aspects of the Rule
A. The Employer Necessity Test
New York's standard for determining when telework is necessary is virtually impossible to satisfy. Because telecommuters' jobs generally involve location-independent work (work that can be done anywhere), there will be few cases in which the work simply cannot be done in the New York office.
Further, there are situations in which, even though the work is of a kind that can be performed in New York, telework is truly necessary. For example, in some cases, employers may be required to authorize nonresident employees who are disabled to telecommute part-time as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In such cases, the nature of the work may be such that it could be performed in New York, but the condition of the individual may be such that working from home is legally mandated.
Similarly, telework is an important element of the continuity of operations plans of both public and private employers. When disruptions occur, such as the heightened security alerts of this past summer, employers may invoke their contingency plans and ask their staffs to disperse. Because employers will want the staffers to function effectively when decentralized, the employers will need to have given them adequate telework experience -- before the emergency -- to enable them to develop strong telework skills.
Despite the critical role telework can play in our nation's preparedness, if the work these employees do outside the state could have been done inside the state, New York may regard the use of telework for emergency management/disaster recovery purposes as unnecessary: It may subject telecommuters to the risk of double income taxation for their efforts to sustain the smooth operation of our government and businesses during turbulent times.6
B. 'Part-Time' Telecommuters
Another unreasonable aspect of New York's application of the convenience rule is that although the rule applies only to nonresidents who work partly within and partly outside New York, the state casts a wide net when determining which nonresidents fall into the category of part-time telecommuters subject to the rule. The state may apply the rule not only to nonresidents who commute to New York several days a week, but also to nonresidents who live well beyond commuting distance and spend a small fraction of their work time inside New York.7 New York is prepared to tax the entire salary of telecommuters who earn the vast bulk of their incomes in states other than New York.
C. Misplaced Motivations
Among New York's motives in applying the convenience rule is to prevent manipulative employees from using telework specifically to reduce their New York tax liability. The fear is that employees will either work -- or falsely claim to have worked -- one or two hours on a Saturday and then shift to their home states the income they allegedly earned on that day.
New York's worry demonstrates a basic mistrust of telework. The underlying assumption is that employees claiming to work at home on the weekend either are not actually working or are not performing tasks for which they are paid. However, that assumption reflects Industrial Age thinking about how Information Age businesses operate.
The modern workplace often includes a distributed workforce capable of accessing and using office resources from a wide variety of remote locations. With the increasing availability and use of technology that makes collaborative distance working easy, there is no rational basis for presuming that an employee claiming to have worked off-site was either untruthful or uncompensated. New York has the option of requiring taxpayers to maintain and submit proof that they performed paid work on any day they claim as a non-New York workday.8
III. Some Adverse Consequences for Employers
In addition to its punitive effect on interstate telecommuters, the convenience rule is detrimental to New York employers. One problem for employers is that the rule may subject them to unduly hard-to-meet payroll obligations. New York businesses are required to withhold New York state taxes from their telecommuters' wages if the telecommuters will owe tax there.9 One critic of the convenience rule has previously observed that if at the beginning of the year a nonresident telecommuter anticipates working at home full-time and unexpectedly travels to New York on business for a few days in December, the employer could suddenly become obligated to withhold New York taxes based on the telecommuter's income for the whole year. The employee's remaining salary for the year might not be sufficient to cover the withholding that is due.10
Another reason the convenience rule is harmful to employers is that by making telework expensive for both telecommuters and employers, the rule discourages its use. Organizations that underuse telework will lose the many bottom-line advantages of workforce distribution -- including, for example, increased productivity, reduced turnover, and reduced overhead expenses. Unable to exploit the cost savings that wide-scale telework offers, New York businesses may decide to follow their employees to less expensive regions. Or, they may decide to export American jobs offshore.
IV. A Constitutional Challenge
New York's convenience-of-the-employer rule has been widely repudiated and was recently challenged as unconstitutional in Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal of New York.11
The case concerned Edward Zelinsky, a Connecticut resident and law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York. During the two tax years in dispute, Zelinsky came to New York on certain days to teach classes and meet with students, and he worked from home on other days, grading student work and engaging in legal scholarship.
On his New York nonresident income tax returns, Zelinsky treated the income he earned while working in New York as New York-source income and treated the income he earned while working from home as Connecticut-source income. Applying the convenience rule, New York disallowed the treatment and taxed Zelinsky on 100 percent of his income, including the income he earned while working in Connecticut. Because Connecticut did not agree with New York that income earned in Connecticut is New York-source income, Connecticut also taxed him on the income he earned at home. Thus, Zelinsky owed taxes to both states on the same income.12
Zelinsky challenged New York's application of the convenience rule under the Commerce and Due Process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Although Zelinsky had the support of both the Partnership for New York City, which represents the interests of the city's business community, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the New York Court of Appeals rejected his claims.13
Zelinsky appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his petition for certiorari, he argued that New York violated the Commerce Clause by failing to apportion taxes fairly as between New York and Connecticut and by subjecting him to the risk of double taxation. He emphasized that whether the state of residence actually imposes an income tax on the telecommuter is irrelevant: The convenience rule is unconstitutional because it puts a telecommuter at risk of having to pay twice. In addition, he argued that New York violated the Due Process Clause by exerting its tax authority outside its borders. Connecticut's attorney general also pressed the Supreme Court to take the case, arguing that thousands of Connecticut residents currently bear the burden of New York's tax penalty on interstate telecommuting.14
Nonetheless, in April 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Zelinsky's petition for review.15 The Court's refusal to hear the case was the impetus for "The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2004."
V. 'The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act'
By approving "The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act," Congress would do what the Supreme Court failed to do: prohibit states from applying the convenience-of-the-employer rule. The bills sponsored by Dodd and Shays provide that, in applying its income tax laws to nonresident individuals:
a state may treat a nonresident as working in the state only if the nonresident is physically present there;
a state may not tax nonresidents on income earned when the nonresidents are physically outside the state; and
a state may not treat nonresidents as physically present in the state on the ground that the nonresidents were working from home for their convenience.16
Federal legislation to redress the ills of the convenience rule is necessary because the state-based rule has nationwide impact. When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Zelinsky's case, it effectively sanctioned New York's application of the convenience rule and authorized any state not yet applying a comparable rule to start doing so. Further, New York (or any other convenience rule state) may subject to double income taxation nonresident telecommuters located anywhere in the country. Indeed, New York has demonstrated that it stands ready to wield its tax powers far beyond neighboring states.17
In an age when laptops, PDAs, BlackBerries, and cell phones are commonplace tools for driving productivity, a tax disincentive to telework has no place. As noted earlier, telework can facilitate continuity of operations for government and business during emergencies, and it can enable cost-conscious employers to compete successfully without shipping domestic jobs to foreign countries. Also, it can empower the handicapped and the elderly to become, or remain, productive members of our workforce, and it can help rural communities expand their economies. It can reduce road congestion, air pollution, our country's dependence on foreign oil, gas prices, and wasteful spending on transportation infrastructure.
By dismantling the convenience rule, "The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act" would strengthen our ability to achieve these and other important national goals. With the bipartisan support the legislation has, Congress must approve it quickly.
Working actively to secure passage of the Dodd-Shays legislation is The Telework Coalition (Telcoa), a Washington-based organization dedicated to advancing telework. Telcoa is promoting a letter campaign, offering Web site visitors at http://www.telcoa.org sample letters they can send their representatives in the House and Senate to encourage these representatives to support the legislation. Employers and telecommuters alike must urge Congress to help ensure that individual states do not prevent citizens, businesses, communities, or government from maximizing the benefits of interstate telework.
FOOTNOTES
1 S. 2785 (cosponsored by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn.); H.R. 5067. (For S. 2785, see Doc 2004-18166 [ PDF] or 2004 TNT 178-19  .)
2 20 N.Y.C.R.R. section 132.18.
3 See 61 Pa. Code section 109.8; Neb. Admin. Code section 316-22-003.01C(1).
4 See for example, State of New York, Department of Taxation and Finance, Income/Franchise Tax -- District Office Audit Manual, Withholding Tax Field Audit Guidelines, Sept. 17, 2004 (Audit Guidelines); and Nicole Belson Goluboff, The Law of Telecommuting (ALI-ABA 2001, with 2004 supplement), ch. 9 ("Law of Telecommuting")(collecting cases).
5 See Nicole Belson Goluboff, "Perspective: New York's Convenience-of-Employer Doctrine Cries Out for Congress to Stop State Taxation of Interstate Telecommuting," BNA Tax Management Multistate Tax Report, Vol. 11, No. 6 (June 25, 2004).
6 Id.
7 See In the Matter of Huckaby, 776 N.Y.S.2d 125 (App. Div. 3d Dept. 2004)(when a Tennessee resident telecommuted to his New York employer and spent approximately 25 percent of his time working in New York, New York taxed him on 100 percent of his income). (For the decision of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third District in Huckaby, see Doc 2004-9342 [ PDF] or 2004 STT 87-24  .) See also The Law of Telecommuting, supra note 4, ch. 9.
8 See for example, Walter Hellerstein, "Reconsidering the Constitutionality of the 'Convenience of the Employer' Doctrine," State Tax Notes, May 12, 2003, p. 535, 2003 STT 91-3  , or Doc 2003-11660 [ PDF].
9 Tax Law section 671(a).
10 Peter L. Faber, "Telecommuting -- Practical Problems With the Convenience/Necessity Test," State Tax Notes, Oct. 8, 2001, p. 115, 2001 STT 195-29  , or Doc 2001-25671 [ PDF]. Cf. Audit Guidelines. (The guidelines implicitly acknowledge the risk of unexpected withholding obligations but do not eliminate the uncertainty for employers. They provide that employees "who expect to perform no services in New York may submit, but are not required to submit, an IT-2104.1 to their employer estimating a percentage of services performed in New York of 0%. [IT-2104.1 enables nonresidents to estimate the percentage of their services that they will perform within New York State and that will be subject to New York State withholding tax.] The employer may rely on the IT-2104.1 as long as the employer does not have actual knowledge or reason to know that the Form IT-2104.1 is or has become incorrect or unreliable." These guidelines leave open the possibility that an employer will still face eleventh-hour withholding responsibilities on 100 percent of a telecommuter's income if, for example, the employer knew or had reason to know the telecommuter's form had become incorrect or the employee never submitted an IT-2104.1.)
11 Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal of New York, 1 N.Y.3d 85 (2003), cert. denied, 124 S. Ct. 2068 (2004). (For the New York Court of Appeals' decision in Zelinsky, see Doc 2003-25309 [ PDF] or 2003 STT 228-10  .) See also In the Matter of Huckaby, 776 N.Y.S.2d 125 (App. Div. 3d Dept. 2004)(challenging New York's convenience rule on due process and equal protection grounds).
12 Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal of New York, 1 N.Y.3d 85 (2003), cert. denied, 124 S. Ct. 2068 (2004).
13 Id.
14 Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal of New York, brief of Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of the state of Connecticut, as amicus curiae in support of petitioner, filed March 16, 2004.
15 Zelinsky v. Tax Appeals Tribunal of New York, 124 S. Ct. 2068 (2004).
16 S. 2785; H.R. 5067.
17 See for example, In the Matter of Huckaby, 776 N.Y.S.2d 125 (App. Div. 3d Dept. 2004)(New York applied convenience rule when the employee telecommuted from his Tennessee home); In the Matter of Wallace, DTA No. 817182 (New York Division of Tax Appeals Dec. 21, 2000)(New York applied convenience rule when the employee telecommuted from his home in Maine).
END OF FOOTNOTES
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