Coda wrote:
Some companies I have worked for actually paid an allowance towards electricity and internet costs whenever they required you to work from home (being on-call for example).
Yes, companies pay for all sorts of things in negotiation with employees, as I’m sure many will be aware, particularly employees that have hard to find knowledge or skills. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m working to hire a guy and we employ a consultant company to discuss the relocation situation with the employee and subsequently recommend how we structure an offer. In this case the offer that was recommended and went out is a $50K salary increase plus $92K one time payment to cover all sorts of (to me) funny things that were brought up based on discussion with the applicant. I don’t get visibility into all of the factors for the particular employee (by HR policy), but if we had asked the guy to work from home the cost of a home office would have fallen squarely within the range of things being discussed.
A friend of mine who is by necessity home based, he’s a turbine company field rep with a large territory far from company facilities, does get direct additional compensation for keeping his home office.
Typically all the amounts are ‘gross’d up’ to cover the income tax.
More people working from home will have some tremendous other benefits.
For instance, look at many villages: they are just domitories. There’s no cafe, no shop, not even a pub – these have all closed down because the place is a ghost town during the day. If the workers are staying at home, and going out at lunchtime, there once again will be demand for these things. Where I live, I’m quite fortunate to have a small supermarket, two CoOps, several pubs, several cafes etc. within walking distance. But many similar sized places in the UK (with about 2000 inhabitants) have absolutely nothing. For instance, when we do our annual at Spanhoe, there are three villages within very easy Brompton distance from the airfield, but none of them even have a pub or a village shop – they all closed down.
Another benefit is to those of us who still must go to a work place. Probably 50% of the people pre-COVID driving from where I live into Douglas were doing jobs that could entirely be done from home. Imagine if 50% of the traffic is taken off the road during the rush hour at a stroke. Massive savings to the people homeworking (in both fuel cost, time cost, and pure aggro), massive benefits for those who still have to go into Douglas to work (the morning traffic jam from Quarterbridge backing up all the way past the Spring Valley roundabout is gone), and if you cycle commute like me, massively less danger of being hit by an angry driver (although I ride the back roads, because there are so many cars travelling, some inevitably decide to ‘rat run’ via the secondary routes, then get aggressive because cyclists are “in their way”).
The benefits I think outweight the cost of the commercial property market tanking. Perhaps some can be converted to residence which will help some way to fix the shortage of residential property.
alioth wrote:
For instance, look at many villages: they are just domitories. There’s no cafe, no shop, not even a pub – these have all closed down because the place is a ghost town during the day.
It cuts both ways through and isn’t all good news. House price inflation is often what kills, or at least radically changes, rural economies.
For instance in the village where I live there is no real economy. No butcher, baker, candlestick maker or other blue-collar trade could afford to live here. Just about everyone who lives here is either a fairly well paid white collar professional (some WFH, some commute to Oxford, Birmingham or London), or they run their own company, or they are retired and wealthy. There is a pub, but only because there is a main road through the village and the pub is situated alongside it.
This is not because there is no-one here. On the contrary, with all the retirees and WFH people there are a lot of people here. Once a commercial building in a village (be it a pub, a corner shop, a blacksmith’s shop, or whatever) is turned into a house it is gone for good, because in this country housing is the single most profiable usage of just about any space.
Round here (Mid Wales) there are a surprising amount of small businesses making things like submarine tractors or classic motorcycle parts or massive art installations. But of the thousands of people I have seen as patients I have only ever met a handful of people who truly work from home and are not self employed.
I think a move towards home working would change the area hugely, in some ways for the better as it would probably bring money in. At the moment it is mostly a place to retire. Most of my classmates from school have left for better opportunities. A little demographic balance would be welcome.
Off_Field wrote:
As a commercial property landlord I can easily say in my case business rates are way more of an issue than rent. our rent received for our properties is I think in nearly all cases less (often significantly so) than the business rates applied to the properties. It’s really a terrible system and everyone has known business rates are broken for a long time. Just councils see it as an easy way to rinse some money, and with them still collecting empty rates there is no incentive for them to have properties occupied.
That is interesting. I had not appreciated there are areas where rates are more than the rent. Is this a recent trend and is there some particular reason why this would be so in terms of the type of commercial premise?
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Is this a recent trend and is there some particular reason why this would be so in terms of the type of commercial premise?
In our experience it’s been almost the case for at least the last 10 years or so. I think it’s down to high ratable values compared to actual market achievable rents. I first really became aware of it when a tenant came to us asking for a rent discount arrangement and showed us all his accounts, he was drawing very little expense for himself but his rates bill was above his rent.
Graham wrote:
Once a commercial building in a village (be it a pub, a corner shop, a blacksmith’s shop, or whatever) is turned into a house it is gone for good, because in this country housing is the single most profiable usage of just about any space.
Maybe that says more about the UK’s planning/zoning laws than anything else. In Germany many commercial properties can only be sold to businesses due to local planning regulations. They simply cannot be turned into housing (which we also have s shortage of, but not in rural areas, rather in the cities).
By the way re Working From Home: The German labour minister Hubertus Heil plans to create a legal right for Working From Home for all jobs where this is in any way possible.
I understand a retail business in the US pays sales tax. Low sales, low tax.
In Scotland it pays business rates, assessed by its location and floor area. Its actual sales have no impact on what it pays
Maoraigh wrote:
In Scotland it pays business rates, assessed by its location and floor area. Its actual sales have no impact on what it pays
It make sense sometime, when you set this tax higher and higher, so that establishments with most income are left on high street and it is supposed to be fraction of rent.
It also forces the employer to make people to work from home as much as possible to reduce footprint.
I think they’ll have to reduce it post-covid as a lot of business will just pack and go otherwise.
It was said already in the first month of the Corona crisis that the “digitalization” of the entire society had jumped 4-5 years ahead in an instant. Lots of people working from home, but lots of people aren’t. Everybody is travelling a whole lot less, even if they are working from home or not. I think people gradually will come back. A good working place where you can socialize is a must for people to feel happy. It’s the meetings, and corresponding travelling, that has proven to be redundant (and a time hog), but this change had already started long before corona, especially among the younger generation. It’s the generation above me (I’m soon there myself 
) that still has problems with this, no one else.
People are adaptable. A normal human being will have no problems working from home, but that doesn’t mean he/she would prefer this when given a choice. An employer that can offer a good working place will be more attractive for most people. Also, companies that are able to cut down on expensive, time hungry and completely unnecessary travelling, will be more profitable.
