There are tax implications to where you live and work. If you're moving around the country say one new state every month, you're required to file taxes in all the states that you've worked from and received salary.

This increases the burden on both the employer and employee.

And some states are starting to crack down on this sort of thing. Someone was telling me that their company is going to start tracking time spent in different locations based on expense reports so that they can take appropriate actions (and have the employee do so as well) if they're above thresholds.

> based on expense reports

Don't expense anything from the state you are in.

Have everything shipped to an address in California and forwarded.

This is the snail mail version of a VPN, and I'm not sure why people are downvoting me on a hacker site. Hacking the world is what we do. This is how we stand up for our privacy. If you use VPNs at all in your online life to conceal your location there is no reason you can't invent a VPN for packages and mail as well.

I don't think the hacking argument will stand-up when you're up again the IRS for tax evasion.

Don't evade taxes. The only thing I'm suggesting evading and standing up against is location-based salary discrimination.

Remote workers should be allowed to move and live wherever they want as long as they can be online at hours that are useful for the company, and they should be treated as a black box that gets work done and paid according to what they get done, not where they get it done.

Don't get my position wrong, I'm all for freedom of workers moving around and working from wherever they want.

The issue is the current regulatory and taxation structures aren't built for that. You're encountering friction because of these current systems.

The way to properly address this js to overhaul the system itself, this is by legislation and having representation that is aligned with what you want.

"Hacking" around it isn't the way to go.

To take a coding analogy, you're currently frustrated with the limitations of the architecture, which is understandable and I emphasize. But adding hacky patches to get around it isn't the way to go.

Unfortunately architectural overhauls in society are slow and take a long time.

I strongly encourage you to get involved in any grassroots movement to further the way you want to the world to become.

Fundamentally, there's an incompatibility between living in a country that normally has complete freedom of movement between states and a system that also essentially requires you to be a resident of a specific state for reason of things like driver's licenses and state income taxes (although if you split your time in multiple locations you may actually be required to file in multiple locations anyway). It can be done legally but, as I commented up-thread, a number of states are starting to look harder at people who spend a lot of time in their state but are paying all their income taxes elsewhere. You can't just say you live in Nevada because you have a PO Box there.

> overhaul the system itself

I agree with this, but it will take decades, and I'll leave it to politics experts to deal with that. There are things I want to get done in my life, and I will get them done without needing to involve myself in that mess. If it needs me to move into another country or jurisdiction to get those things done, I'm open to that.

I respect those that want to go fight that battle, but everyone needs to pick their own battles to fight, and I have enough battles I'm fighting already.

> adding hacky patches to get around it isn't the way to go

I disagree. You should fix the architecture but you should also feel free to use hacky patches until the fix is done.

Meanwhile it isn't the taxation structure I'm arguing against, it's the salary discrimination by location.

If a company values my work at $X/year they should give me $X/year independent of all other considerations, and also give someone else who accomplishes the same exact work $X/year independent of other considerations.

Many companies don't make "significant" (yes, word doing a lot of work) cost of living adjustments within the US. But most of them probably have salary bands that are materially lower than top of SV scale. Flat wages for remote across the country isn't a general problem but it is if you want to get paid what Google will pay locally.

Am I going to ship my hotel room? It's business travel that's being discussed here.

They need to know where your primary residence is. Because of things like payroll taxes, social security taxes, income tax withholding and unemployment insurance. Which vary by state and (sometimes) city. Not knowing means the company is not in compliance with labor laws and can lead to rather large fines.

> They need to know where your primary residence is

I think even for privacy reasons it's perfectly reasonable to never give out your address. You can always give out a UPS box as your primary address.

You could also have 2 residences in 2 states or even 2 countries and have them both with weight=0.5 and no primary node.

The entire idea of a "residence" address is an invented notion and de facto optional. You could always be on the move in an RV for example and still go show up for remote work every day.

I'm no lawyer, but that sounds like tax fraud to me.