Tax business more if staff work from home, says Deutsche Bank

A hefty tax should be imposed on people working from home to help support those whose livelihoods are under threat, according to a report.

Deutsche Bank called for employers to pay a 5 per cent levy of workers’ salary, with the income generated diverted to millions who cannot do their work from home, including shop and factory workers.

The tax raid would rake in £6.9billion a year in the UK, according to Germany’s biggest bank.

This would then be used to pay grants of £2,000 a year to low income workers and those threatened with redundancy.

Luke Templeman, a strategist at Deutsche, said: ‘For years we have needed a tax on remote workers. 

‘Covid has just made it obvious. Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society.’

Millions of white collar workings have been working from home since the pandemic hit.

The Government has instructed people to work from home if they can during the second national lockdown, causing many offices which had slowly been filling up to become deserted again.

But there are millions who cannot work from home, including workers in essential shops which remain open such as supermarkets, and factory workers. 

Templeman said: ‘The virus has benefited those who can do their jobs virtually, such as bank analysts, and threatened the livelihoods or health of those who can’t’.

He said remote workers are contributing less to the infrastructure of the economy, ‘while still receiving its benefits’.

For example, those working from home are not paying for public transport and often not buying lunch from sandwich shops and restaurants in city centres. 

Templeman said: ‘Working from home offers direct financial savings on expenses such as travel, lunch. clothes and cleaning.’

He added that the 5 per cent tax rate ‘will leave them no worse off than if they had chosen to go into the office’.