Want to be penalized for choosing the work at home lifestyle?  Do you think you should pay double the taxes of someone who works in a brick and mortar office just because you have the good sense to work at home? Do you want to pay income tax to a state you don't even live in? If you answered 'no' to any of these questions, now is a crucial time to fight for your work at home rights.

Talk about unfair taxation.

Work-at-Home.org takes issue on almost innumerable points of such a boundaryless taxation policy but makes the following arguments:

• What right does any state have to tax people who are not even in a position to use the State's services? New York tax goes for New York roads, New York infrastructure, New York parks, New York public assistance programs, New York security and other New York amenities. Why should someone who lives in another state be required to pay for amenities that he or she is in no position to benefit from or cause expenses related to them? Such taxation would seem highly unethical and would more closely resemble a hi-jacking across state lines than a taxation event.
  
• This tax law is a great way to make sure that we must keep buying more and more oil from the Middle East. Uh, I thought that was a bad thing. And, hello? Has anyone heard of such things as unsafe air quality and depleted ozone? Penalizing telecommuting home workers with additional tax would discourage people from working at home and cause us to lose valuable benefits from people who telecommute. Americans would consume more petrochemical products and more oil, only to spew the byproducts of this consumption into the air to hurt all of us.
  
• Then there's our kids. (This list of objections isn't listed in priority sequence.). Don't our kids have the right to a childhood that includes quality time with their parents? Double taxing would force mom and dad back out of the house into their cars for that daily commute of up to three hours a day instead of being able to share that valuable time with their families. (Sad that taxing authorities don't seem to care at all about things like kids who need their parents or seniors who can't afford the luxury of being able to afford medications and property taxes on fixed incomes.)
  
• Over-complicated tax code. I can see it now... a three page tax form to calculate how many minutes the past year you worked for Company A in State #1, and how many minutes the past year you worked for Company B in State #2. We'll be sitting in audits someday trying to produce records and account for how many minutes we worked for every company we've worked for in the past seven years. While greedy government bureaucrats try to grab more and more of our money and fight over who gets more of it, you and I are almost assured of ending up with tax laws that are even more complicated than the brain-numbing, incomprehensible mess than even IRS employees themselves barely understand. (You didn't have anything else to do with all that wasted time and all that money you keep paying your CPA, did you?)
  
• The tax law could hurt small businesses, and hurting small businesses hurts all of us. Setting up an office for one employee can cost about $10,000. Allowing an employee to work at home costs far, far less. How many would be small business owners, including would be minority-owned business owners, would suffer from this policy?
  
• Many of the people who work at home are physically challenged and work at home because they have few alternatives. It would obviously be unfair to discriminate against this group of people with a double tax when they have little or no choice but to work at home.
  

The Supreme Court ruling paves the way for more and more states to adopt New York's money-grubbing tax policy, but Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut announced his intention to introduce a measure to prevent the state of New York from levying taxes on Connecticut telecommuters, and telecommuters of other states, for work they perform in their own states. "Connecticut workers help drive our economic growth. They shouldn't have to pay an unfair "toll' tax simply because they work from home,"said Dodd. "Telecommuters in our state play a big part in our economy and they shouldn't be penalized for their work. This measure will help shield and protect them from unfair and unwarranted taxes and ensure that they can reap the benefits of telecommuting."

Dodd's initiative will prevent states like New York from collecting taxes from employees for work performed outside that state. Employees would have to be physically present and working in the state for a state to be authorized to collect income tax from the employee. The measure has garnered bipartisan support. Congressman Chris Shays intends to introduce companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

You can help yourself and all of us who work at home by helping to encourage the passing of this legislation:

• Look up your State Senator and contact him or her with a few simple clicks at: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
  
• Look up the name of your very own Congressman and contact him with just a couple clicks at: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
  
• Let them hear from you! Feel free to use our sample letter or you can write your own. Be sure your letter specifically asks your legislator to SUPPORT The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act of 2004.

In the meantime, you may want to steer clear of working at home for New York employers.  Working for them -- even from your home several states away -- may cost you two arms and two legs.

Read Sample Letter #1

Read Sample Letter #2

More information is available from The Telework Coalition, Enabling Virtual, Mobile, and Distributed Work through Education, Technology, and Legislation, www.telcoa.org