Commentary

Telecommuting Tax Break

Georgia businesses that encourage employees to work from home will get an income tax break under a measure signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue on Thursday. The law, one of the first in the nation, gives employers a state income tax credit of up to $20,000 if they conduct a study on how to implement a teleworking program for their business. The measure also rewards employers who implement teleworking programs by giving them a tax credit of up to $1,200 per employee for a percentage of their telework expenses in calendar years 2008 and 2009.

Article here. Some interesting telecommuting bits (including a quotation by yours truly) in this column. Here’s one:

At Apani Networksin Brea, many of its 90 employees telecommute. This lets some workers skip rush-hour traffic and come to work quicker and refreshed. Others work at home all day when concentrating on projects without headquarters hassles. “When you’re working with creative people, how many of them with have an ah-ha moment at home at the dinner table? When those flashes of intuition arrive, you want to test them out as quickly as you can,” says marketing boss David Lynch of telecommuting’s edge. “We tend to treat our people as being capable of managing their own day-to-day objectives.”