Deutsche Bank Proposes 5% Payroll Tax to Help Pandemic Areas | Money and Business, News | Freedom

The German giant Deutsche Bank proposes that those who choose to work from home instead of going to the office pay an additional tax of 5% of the salary, the money will go to those with low incomes and their work requires physical presence, he writes. Business Insider.

A report from the German bank shows that those who work from home would have done no worse after applying the tax, as they could save on clothes, the food they usually bought at the office, or transport costs.

The bank argues that those who worked from home benefited from convenience and flexibility, so the tax would not be wrong.

The areas where the new tax would apply are those that could be most easily adapted to remote working. So far it’s all about programming, game testing, online services, call centers, banking and finance, and even journalism.

Licensed and low-income individuals should be excluded from applying the tax, the bank says.

At the same time, if employers do not provide permanent offices, they would have to pay the 5% fee.

‘The new normal’

“Working from home will be part of the ‘new normal’ long after the pandemic ends. We argue that remote workers should pay a fee for this privilege,” wrote Jim Reid, a research strategist at Deutsche Bank.

Because they worked remotely, they would have contributed less to economic infrastructure, but still benefited from the economic and social benefits, the bank argues.

Germany, champion of teleworking: 67% of Germans work from home!

Working from home is not a pandemic-specific trend, but it has been accelerated. According to the report, between 2005 and 2018, the number of Americans who worked regularly from home increased by 173%.

On the other hand, the proportion of the total workforce was still small, being 5.4%.

But the pandemic led to a tenfold increase in this percentage, so much so that 56 percent of Americans worked from home, according to the report.

In the UK, the share increased sevenfold to 47%. In Germany, 67% of the workforce worked from home, according to the data!

Abandoned cities

Big American tech companies, like Facebook, Google or Twitter, have sent their employees to work from home, which has led to a real “exodus” from the metropolis of San Francisco.

The same happened in New York or London, both centers abandoned by financial workers.

A survey by the German bank shows that more than half of those who have tried to work from home want to continue in this way even after the end of the pandemic.

The effects of the tax: tens of millions of people will receive higher wages

From the application of the 5% tax, an additional 3 million workers with poorly paid jobs in the UK, 10 million in Germany and 29.2 million in the US will be paid.

From the money raised, a low-income Briton could receive a salary increase of £ 2,307, or £ 192 per month (€ 214).

A German with a low income could receive another 1,538 euros per year, or 128 euros per month.

Finally, a low-paid American would receive another 1,666 euros per year, the equivalent of $ 138 a month (163 euros).

Why it’s worth helping small business employees in shopping malls

The bank argues that the work-from-home tax doesn’t just subsidize businesses with no future. This gives the example of a sandwich shop in the center of a city.

If he has no future due to working from home, the government will not provide medium-term subsidies to support this activity. But the people who work here deserve a hand, to do a new training, for example.

The bank also says the contribution of essential workers who work every day must be recognized, exposing themselves to the risk of contracting the disease.