#41 | Remote Work and it’s Effect on Office Space feat. Michael Cupps & Todd Rothbard

Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz

Michael Cupps discusses remote working, the four-day workweek and the future of office space. Tenant and Landlord Attorney Todd RothBard talks about Pandemic relief for landlords and tenants and where it’s headed. Episode Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Practical Tax podcast, with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz, LLP, a tax law firm. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is based upon information available as of date of recording and will not be updated for changes in law regulation. Any information is not to be considered tax advice or legal advice and does not form an attorney/client relationship. Further, this podcast may be construed as attorney advertising. You should see professional consultation for your individual tax and legal situation. Chip Franklin: Welcome to Practical Tax. I'm Chip Franklin. That is Steve Moskowitz, tax attorney. Steve, this is fascinating where we are right now in the post pandemic world and the remote working and people kind of trickling back in. I know you are making a move for your employees to be better for them and safer and a new location. What's your experience with some of your clients and everybody else? Is remote working going to hang in there or is it starting to go away? Steve Moskowitz: Oh, no. Remote working is alive and well and will be with us for the rest of our lives. A lot of people prefer as a matter of fact, I've seen surveys where a lot of employees said, if I can't work remotely for you, I'll work remotely for somebody else. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because how much time do you spend commuting? First of all, you could use that time to work more or to play more, not to mention the cost of commuting, not to mention you go into the office, you're wearing your fancy duds. If you're at home, you're probably in jammies or sweats, not to mention, how about all those people that have kids and are either home to take care of the kids or close to school. If something happens, you can run right to school as opposed to being in the corporate world. And even if you left, as soon as you got the phone call, it would take you a while to get to the school. So it's an awful lot of advantages. And another thing is that for example, here in San Francisco, a lot of people have left San Francisco and said, well, why should they pay a lot of money for a small, not so hot apartment when they can move to another state, buy a house for what they were paying for rent and also maybe move to a state, doesn't even have an income tax. Not to mention people that say, "Well, I can go to a resort area and work from there." Not to mention all the countries that are saying, "Hey, we'll give you a special visa, come and work in our country. We just like you to stay here and spend some money in our hotels and our restaurants." Chip Franklin: I think I read somewhere, Steve, like 75,000 American professionals moved to Barcelona last year and they're working from Barcelona. And many of them from California. Steve Moskowitz: Well, talk about moving. If you move to Puerto Rico, you can legally avoid most of your federal taxes. Chip Franklin: Well, let's talk a little bit about that with an expert. Michael Cupps is from ActiveOps and these guys, they know this cold and he's nice enough to join us here. Michael, obviously you heard this conversation. It seemed like we were moving towards the possibility of a four-day work week, but then it kind of got flipped with the pandemic where people are working remote. First of all, do you concur with Steve that this is here to stay? Michael Cupps: Oh, absolutely. We see it in our customers and they're the biggest banks and insurance companies on the globe. And they're as much as they try, they're not those employees aren't coming back. Chip Franklin: That should be good for the business, right? I mean guys, right,