13 APA's Top Payroll Questions & Answers for 2020 Expense reimbursements for telecommuters Managing a Payroll Department Q. Our organization is considering requiring most of our staff to work at home 100% of the time; affected employees would no longer come to an office. How should we pay for the business expenses of employees working at home for their business expenses like toner cartridges and other office supplies? We would like to have the employees purchase these on their own locally and then reimburse them. What else should we consider? A. At my company we will buy toner for our remote employees and equipment they need, such as desktop computers, monitors, and printers. We also reimburse employees for some office supplies such as printer paper. We do not pay for anything additional. If you reimburse the employees for office-related expenses, you should do so under an accountable plan (see The Payroll Source®, §3.3-5). You can use IRS Publication 535, Business Expenses, as a guide to get started. I also recommend having a solid work-from-home policy that outlines the employee's and the employer's responsibilities. The policy should also address workers' compensation. You will also want to consider any impact to nexus if you now have employees working from different states (or in some cases different counties or even cities) where you currently do not have nexus. (Nexus is established by having a business presence in a state or locality and makes a company subject to the laws of that state, such as for state income withholding.) Our company once declined to hire a candidate for remote work because the county in which the candidate lived would have required us to file and pay a corporate tax based on the revenue generated by that prospective employee. 94https://bookshelf.americanpayroll.org/payroll_source/ https://bookshelf.americanpayroll.org/payroll_source/ https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf