Working from home remains the norm after Sept. 1

The government's advice is to work from home as much as possible even after September 1. While in March there was still talk of a bridging period, now no end date is mentioned. If we all structurally work more from home, this will require new or additional agreements in a large number of organizations. This raises the question of what employers must do (extra) for their employees who work from home.

The employer's duty of care

According to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, an employer is obliged to ensure good working conditions. As an employer, you must provide a healthy and safe home workplace that is adapted to the personal characteristics of the employee. If the workplace does not comply with health and safety regulations, you can be held liable for any damage to the employee's health. The same health and safety rules apply to the home workplace as to the office workplace. Here, your employees are co-responsible for those working conditions at their home workplace. They must immediately communicate dangers to their safety or health to you as the employer.

The costs of complying with health and safety regulations must not be borne by employees, the Occupational Health and Safety Act states. If you cannot facilitate working from home in accordance with the requirements of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, then as an employer you must provide an office work situation that adheres to the RIVM guidelines.

Home work allowance

Employees who work from home a lot will feel it in their wallets. For example, a lot of cups of coffee or tea go through at home. On top of that comes the extra consumption of gas, water and electricity. The question is whether you should reimburse these (extra) costs incurred by the employee.

When working from home becomes structural, as an employer you can provide a homework allowance in return. However, this is not mandatory. Allowances that you give to your employees are in principle taxed for payroll taxes. If you do want to provide a home office allowance, you can provide it untaxed via the work-related costs scheme if you include the allowance in the free space. You have one free space within which you can include allowances and benefits in kind for all employees. There is no need to split up the expenses per employee.

The free margin means that you can annually use 1.7 percent of the total wage bill for tax purposes (up to 400,000 euros) for untaxed allowances, benefits in kind or provisions to your employees. If the fiscal wage bill exceeds this amount, the free allowance for the excess is 1.2 percent. Due to the corona crisis, the legislator in 2020 increased the free space for the first 400,000 euros once to 3 percent. So you can only provide a home office allowance untaxed if there is still free space left.

Some allowances and benefits in kind are not at the expense of the free space. These are the so-called targeted exemptions and nil valuations. Examples include the targeted exemption for actual costs of public transport and reimbursements for own transport of up to € 0.19 per business kilometer. There is a nil valuation for facilities in the workplace, such as a fixed computer. A nil valuation may also apply for health and safety provisions at the home workplace, if these provisions result from compliance with health and safety regulations that fit within the working conditions policy of your company.

Note: Are you already at the maximum of 3 percent (normally 1.7 percent)? Then you must pay 80 percent tax on allowances, benefits in kind and disposals that you provide to the employee and for which no targeted exemption or nil valuation applies!

Homework policy

Now that working from home no longer seems to be of a temporary nature, it may be advisable to establish arrangements for working from home in a homework policy. A homeworking policy allows you to shape and limit homeworking. A good homework policy includes:

• A description for which positions working from home is or is not possible.
• How often the employee may work from home and when (absolutely) not.
• The requirements for a workplace at home.
• The ability to monitor employees with explanations of why you are doing it and when.

In this way, you fulfill your duty of care for a safe working environment as much as possible.

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