You must be aware of where your employees are working from because you have an obligation to follow the employment and tax laws of that location. If your employee isn't doing work, you aren't required to care (beyond any IP or personal security concerns you may have).

This is one reason among many we should eliminate employer-based tax enforcement. Your taxes should be between you and the government; the government should not force your employer to act as a tax nanny (e.g. with mandatory withholding).

That still wouldn't absolve companies of the obligation to know where employees are working from. Employment laws and worker protections vary from one state and city to another. To give one example, I had a friend that was fired from his Arizona job in ~2015 when his boss found out he was gay. If that friend had been working from California instead, he would have had legal protections.

The obligation seems entirely arbitrary.

First, the employee (not the company) is the willing participant with the state benefits and obligations.

If the employee was hired in AZ, and never changed his tax residency to say CA with employer, why would employee be able to claim protections given by CA? If employees are going to play the game, they should be OK with the consequences.

Second, company level agreements don't work this way. Why should tax nexus ? For examples a company is based in CA, so it states its legal venue is in CA for contract disputes. Company then moves to FL....The tax residency change does not give the company the right to to update its legal venue to FL for convenience with its contractual counterparties.

So then, why can states break basic contract rules, which we hold sacrosant at the company-person level ? And what regulation exists to entitle states to pursue companies that do this unwillingly ?

There are laws that state you must pay taxes, not discriminate, etc.

What are the laws that mandate companies to know where your remote employee is working at all times ?

Should a company need to know the rules of 50 different states at all times, to know if they must check employees working offsite ? And how is a company subject to a jurisdiction's rules that it does not know it is party to ?

You're misunderstanding things. There's no law that companies have to know where their employees are working from. It's simply a consequence of the fact that governments have sovereign power to regulate things within their borders, including employment. Companies that pay to have work performed within state X generally [1] have to follow those regulations. If an employee moves to another jurisdiction and the employment agreement is not compatible with applicable local laws, then there are two main options: The relationship can be terminated or it can be brought into compliance.

If a company has employees in all 50 states, then yeah they need to have compatible employment practices with all of them (plus the respective cities those employees work from, for extra fun). In practice this doesn't come up much because most employment regulations are minor and most governments have similar rules.

[1] there are a million qualifications to this, speak to a lawyer if you want details about your particular case

The problem is that these laws are all written from the logical perspective that employment is mostly a thing where work occurs locally. What we need are new frameworks specifically for remote work and a way to manage this all internationally. Maybe something similar to that minimum corporate tax that has been proposed (on all companies internationally) but for individuals?

I understand your point but axing the entire tax portion of this problem is massive. Sure, your employer would probably still have to know to some degree, but it would be much easier and could end up with something like "you don't need to tell us unless you're working from $listOfPlaces".

Good luck getting that (potentially every changing) list from the hands of your HR and legal departments! Remember, that (at least in US) lot of protections and laws change quite frequently and not knowing where an employee is would put the company at huge risk. Companies, for most part, establish their bases where they find local laws are favorable to them (in addition to ability to find enough able warm bodies to fill the positions), they don't want to open themselves up to lawsuits, legal hassle, what-nots from state/city the laws of which they are not fully appraised of all the time! What happens when that @listOfPlaces change, say every year?

Not going to happen (would be complicated and makes tax revenue collection harder and reduce govt income while enabling widespread fraud). Also worth considering this is risky from an employer perspective as having employees based in unexpected places also means unexpected, possibly large liabilities eg local sales tax, employee rights etc. Specifically for US firms, foreign employment rights differ greatly and are often stronger in ways US firms find surprising eg around annual and parental leave. For example, a someone working from, say, France for a US firm with EU retail customers could quite possibly trigger a EU tax enforcement action against the company if it’s not on top of things. Or they could quite reasonably avail themselves of their much better French leave and competition rights.

Ahh.. but you see. This way there is a cashflow for interim projects and government does not have to wait for you to voluntarily give what you think is fair:P

Yes.

We have established that during onboarding a person enters their home address.

My question is different.

What sort of regulation or mandate forces an employer to keep checking over the employee's shoulder? And how does reasonable get defined in this context ? In other words, what mandates exist for companies to force them to play big brother , and also define what tests must be done when playing big brother ?

And why does the employer come in defense of a state with which the company has no tax-nexus otherwise?

"Does a company have any responsibility if the employee lies "

May be, may be not but in practice, you are not going to be able to tell IRS or another compliance org. that sorry, my employee lied so it's not my problem. As the employer, you are still on the hook for any taxes and other compliance related issues regardless. You can sue your employee may be later but that is not going to save you from the wrath of Uncle Sam and others.

Why would an employer be unable to claim indemnity if their employee committed fraud? I agree that your position is the safe, conservative perspective, but I don't think it's quite so absolute.