Work from home tax? Google employees who don’t come back in to the old office may get paid less | CBC News
Google employees based in the same office before the pandemic could see changes in pay if they switch to working from home permanently, according to a company pay calculator seen by Reuters.
Adjusting salaries based on cost-of-living where remote workers — rather than their offices — are located is an experiment taking place across Silicon Valley, which often sets trends for large employers.
Facebook and Twitter also pay less to remote employees who move to less expensive areas. However, smaller companies including Reddit and Zillow have shifted to location-agnostic pay models, citing advantages when it comes to hiring, retention and diversity.
Alphabet Inc’s Google stands out in offering employees a calculator that allows them to see the effects of a move. But in practice, some remote employees, especially those who commute from long distances, could experience pay cuts without changing their addresses. “Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from,” a Google spokesperson said, adding that pay will differ from city to city and state to state.
One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and said they would likely see their pay cut by about 10 per cent by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company’s Work Location Tool launched in June.
The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office — despite the two-hour commute — saying the pay cut would’ve been an amount similar to their last promotion.
“I didn’t do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut,” they said.
CBC News reached out to Google to know whether or not compensation for Canadian staff varies depending on where they are located. That request was not immediately returned.
Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who researches pay determination, said Google’s pay structure raises questions about who will feel the impacts most acutely, including families.
“What’s clear is that Google doesn’t have to do this,” Rosenfeld said. “Google has paid these workers at 100 per cent of their prior wage, by definition. So it’s not like they can’t afford to pay their workers who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving.”
Screenshots of Google’s internal salary calculator seen by Reuters show that an employee living in Stamford, Conn. — an hour from New York City by train — would be paid 15 per cent less if she worked from home, while a colleague from the same office living in New York City would see no cut from working from home. Screenshots showed five and 10 per cent differences in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas.
Interviews with Google employees indicate pay cuts as high as 25 per cent for remote work if they left San Francisco for an almost-as-expensive area of the state such as Lake Tahoe.
The calculator states it uses U.S. Census Bureau metropolitan statistical areas (CBSAs). Stamford, Conn., for example, is not in New York City’s CBSA, even though many people who live there work in New York..
A Google spokesperson said the company will not change the salary of employees who make a switch to remote work if they remain in the same city as the office.
For example, the spokesperson said, employees working in the New York City office will be paid the same as those working remotely from another New York City location.
Google did not specifically address the issue for commuters from areas such as Stamford, Conn.
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