There’s a long-running disagreement here about whether we should pay for home broadband lines so that staff who work at home can easily access email, office files, and office web-based databases. At the moment, staff work at home mostly for their own convenience, but we will shortly be developing a more active home-working policy — and this question is bound to be high on the list.

Arguments FOR reimbursing staff:
— online access is essential for efficient homeworking
— some staff would only get broadband in order to work at home
— reimbursing individual dial-up calls may cost the organisation MORE than paying a monthly broadband fee

Arguments AGAINST reimbursing staff:
— the Inland Revenue does not allow broadband as a tax-deductible expense. So if we reimburse staff, either we or the staff person will have to pay taxes on the reimbursement. We would rather put our money into tax-effective benefits.
— broadband is very cheap now and practically everyone has it anyway. If we reimburse it, a lot of people who originally got broadband for their own private use will, understandably, start charging it to the office.

I would be very grateful to know how other organisations (particularly other charities) are handling this. Or should we all lobby the IR to come into the 21st century?

thanks
Patti Whaley
Patti Whaley