What MS said about VPN
I have coworkers that thought they could outsmart IT and were given one warning and told they would be fires if they tried it again.
But that was before the large warnings about it.
I doubt you would get a warning now. Likely just fired if you use a private VPN to spoof your location to appear within the states
As others have said, it is a state law vs IRS issue. So, that state would go after you .
Most importantly, it is just like anything else you can lie about or misrepresent in your taxes. State/IRS is likely never going to find out unless you get audited.
100%
Very unlikely to get audited, especially given how swamped and short-staffed the IRS is right now.
Itās your risk to take if you want to lie about anything on your taxes
Heck, I have a friend with an all cash business down in Tacoma.
He has not paid taxes in over a decade.
I would add that itās even unlikely they catch it with an audit. If you āliveā in Florida for tax purposes but spend summer months working in Michigan, it would be very hard to prove that you actually worked from Michigan and skipped out on the taxes.
Iām not condoning it; thereās still the issue of ethics. Iām just saying Your chance of getting caught by the IRS is very low
SAY THEIR NAMES.
Though I think all cash businesses may be higher on the audit list as main laundering targets.
Grey market Marijuana farmer(unlicensed).
Massive grow warehouse.
Supplies legal shops that mix his stuff in with stuff they buy from legal growers.
Also barters a lot. Trades so much random crap to people.
Thatās why, functionally, most people are best served by claiming to work in whatever state their employer reports them as working in.
Itās only when you deviate from reporting, or when you are high profile (perhaps due to having sufficient income to merit auditorsā attention, peculiarities of your employer, or changes in climate like those caused by pandemic-driven WFH) that you run the risk of attracting an audit.
That was another reason I never tried to claim my time in a non-income-tax state. My employer was unlikely to want to deal with the burden of bookkeeping my potential multi-state arrangement (even though it does so for a few employees).
FWIW, apparently state tax collectors do get information from the feds on federal returns filed from the stateās jurisidiction. I moved to CT in the on April 1st many years ago. I owed federal income tax that year and was aware of the likely move, so I waited until the deadline to file my taxes, which I did using my new CT address.
Several months later, I got a letter from Connecticut tax folks asking why I didnāt file a CT state return. They ended up demanding I provide proof of my date of move, proof that I claimed full year residency on my prior stateās returnā¦ What a nuisance.
(Iām dreading having to do the same for my late fatherās returnā¦if the IRS ever gets around to processing it. Iām using my CT address for his return, even though he passed away elsewhere.)
Yeah I would not lie and travel to some said country and get on some public wifi.
Honestly, Iām afraid to even go to a local starbucks and use their free wifi.
Using open/public WiFi should always be a last resort. If a cellular hotspot is available (e.g. if your cell phone supports it), itās almost certainly the better/safer option.
That makes sense. Iāll def get in touch with HR and see what the policy is.
When going to conferences, do people just log into hotel free wifi?
Conferences often have a login specifically for conference-goers. Itās probably not all that secure, but itās usually not public.
Unless you mean in your roomā¦yeah thatās usually more public I think, although often requires your info to keep people from stealing the wifi.
Iāve been doing this for the past year. About 1/2 my time has been spent in the US, mostly my state of permanent residence, while the other 1/2 abroad.
For the countries Iāve been to, itās not only legal to enter as a tourist and wf"h" but encouraged. Youāre not taking employment away from their citizens and are helping their economy by spending money.
As far as my company is concerned, I did get permission from them before doing this. Their only concern was that I was still officially a resident of my current US stateā¦ and I am.
At the start of the pandemic, Canadian reddit subs were full of people complaining about not getting employment benefits and pandemic bailouts. Because they had to show income and couldnt, because they werenāt paying taxes on their cash income.
They didnāt get a lot of sympathy.
Iām not sure my laptop would work outside the country.
All true.
If you are an employee, the burden is on your employer to figure out how much income you earned in each state and taxing municipality, withhold appropriately throughout the year, and report it all correctly on your W2.
Generally you pay to the state you work in first, and if your state of residence has a higher tax rate then you pay the difference to your state of residence.
BUT most states have reciprocal agreements with the states they touch to NOT do it that way at all and instead just let the resident state tax it all. For the people who commute across state lines every [work] day this simplifies things considerably because then they only have to file taxes in one state instead of two, and thereās fewer returns for each state to process.
Like my 4th grade teacher lived in Kentucky and commuted to Ohio every day. So she only paid tax to Kentucky, nothing to Ohio, no need for an Ohio tax return. And she only ever had the one work location: the elementary school in Ohio.
But now think about a travel nurse. They might work in 4 or 5 states, some that have reciprocal agreements with the resident state, some that donāt. Itās up to the employer to figure out which states have the reciprocal agreements. Even if you live in Cincinnati and work over 500 miles away in Philadelphia ā¦ Ohio & Pennsylvania have a reciprocal agreement because they do share a short border. So no Pennsylvania tax in this scenario. But if you live in northwestern Ohio and work a mere 200 miles away in Chicago then Ohio and Illinois do NOT touch and do NOT have reciprocal agreements so you have to pay Illinois tax.
And even in the Philadelphia exampleā¦ youāre off the hook for Pennsylvania tax, but you absolutely DO owe Philadelphia tax. So that income is both Philadelphia and Ohio income. And then if Cincinnatiās tax rate is higher than Philadelphiaās they get the difference between the two rates. (Itās not: Philadelphiaās income tax rate is pretty high.)
It gets pretty crazy pretty fast. I think it would be insane but fun to try to compute all of this for professional athletes and the folks who travel with them. Especially since they all live in different states, even on the same team.
A Colt who lives in Indianapolis will pay tax to Indiana for a game played in Green Bay. But his teammate whose state of residence is Florida will pay tax to Wisconsin for the same game. Add in municipal income taxes and which municipalities tax federal taxable wages vs Medicare wages and which ones have full credits vs partial credits vs no credit for taxes paid to another municipality and 
. And if theyāre injured & not playing but theyāre getting paid and they travel with the team and cheer on their teammates from the sideline, does that count as working? Oh, and then sometimes municipalities can change their tax rate in the middle of the year too.
So moving around and working in a bunch of locations makes this insanely complicated for HR to track and do properly. And while itās probably easier for YOU to fly under the radar of a random municipality in New York State than it is for, say, Joe Burrow, they can come after you with penalties and interest for getting it wrong.
(Pro tip: do not ever shortchange Michigan. Do not wait to pay your Michigan taxes. Do not make a mistake on a Michigan tax return. The feds and most states will slap your wrist a little, but Michigan penalties are brutal.)
Employers might face some state taxes that are not (directly) passed on to the employee, but the bigger issue here is just withholding and reporting everything correctly. This can be crazy.
And in addition to state and municipal income taxes, there can be a plethora of other taxes. Kentucky has county income taxes and mental health districts that also tax income. Oregon assesses a tax that for a long time was 8 cents (maybe higher now?) per day actually worked, but you didnāt have to pay it if you took vacation and/or sick and/or holiday pay for the full day. A handful of states require employers to provide disability insurance with a very specific set of statutory benefits.
Then thereās workerās comp and unemployment. Rules here differ by state. Certainly if you had a workers comp claim then the state where you were working at the time the claim arose would be relevant. I know even less about unemployment than workers comp, but itās a thing that exists and has to be considered.
The reverse would be the bigger issue. Youāll pretty much always pay at least as much as the tax rate where you live. But depending on reciprocal agreements, you may have to pay more than that if where you work is higher. If where you work is lower than where you live, then your resident state is going to grab whatever your work state isnāt entitled to.
So if your state of residence is a flat 5% and you work in a 3% state then youāve got to pay the full 5% anyway.
But if you live in the 3% state and sometimes work in a 5% non-reciprocal state but sometimes work elsewhereā¦ then youāre only required to pay 5% for the days you work in the 5% state. Usually.
While Iām not an expert on every state, I would be shocked if your state of residence was not entitled to tax your income earned in a non-taxing state.
The reverse, however, is a thing that happens and can save some people a lot of money. When I lived and worked in Portland, a number of folks commuted in from Washington. Oregon tax at the time was pretty close to a flat 9% and Washington tax was 0%.
If you live in Oregon and work in Washington then Oregon gets to tax 100% of your income.
But if you live in Washington and work in Oregon, then Oregon only gets to tax your income on the days you are physically present in Oregon. Vacation and sick and holidays donāt countā¦ you look at the number of days you worked in Oregon divided by the number of days you worked anywhere and multiply that ratio times your federal taxable wages and thatās your Oregon taxable wages.
It may be true that Michigan is unlikely to catch you, but my advice remains: