Rfs at 20:43, 3 February 2005

2005-02-03T20:43:15Z

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Questions for consideration:

Q: What should we do with the back hours "earned" up to this
point? At what point do we want to say that we started
accumulating sick and vacation hours?

Q: We may not be able to give ourselves vacation and sick hours
for years previous to 2003 without affecting back taxes, so we
might have to work out another way to distribute them. How?

Q: Oso, Richard, and Laurel each have in the neighborhood of 200
hours total (assuming we go all the way back). If each of us
took six weeks off, that time would be eaten up. Marlin and
Rick have accumulated less hours, but also work less per week,
so they too would have about six weeks coming. We obviously
can't afford to do this all at the same time (or maybe not even
at all), even if we want to. Can we consider some kind of
partial credit? Can we spread out the time off in little pieces
over a whole year? (One week every two months == six weeks in
one year.)

Here's a series of proposals to think about that should address
most of the issues above.

1. We give vacation hours retroactively to everyone in the
collective for all hours worked on Free Geek's payroll, whether
directly or through Anarchy Software. (Implementation suggestions
below.)

[An alternative to number 1 is to give half hours or some other
fraction for the time worked in the Anarchy Software era.]

2. At this point, if workers have accumulated "too much" time, we
can split it in half, and require half the time to be taken in
this calendar year or else be lost. The balance would have to be
taken by the end of 2005 or lost. The original Anarchy Software
employees all have in excess of 5 weeks due at this point.
Everyone else has accumulated less than 2 weeks, so we might draw
the line between "just right" and "too much" at five weeks
accumulated. The point of this would be to spread out the
vacation time so that the effect on the schedule would be
minimized. Also to encourage people to take their time off for
general reasons of sanity.

Now the question "We may not be able to give ourselves vacation
and sick hours for years previous to 2003 without affecting back
taxes, so we might have to work out another way to distribute
them. How?"

I am not a tax attorney, but my common sense says that vacation
isn't money (unless you're on a plan where you cash out at some
point). If we give the original five workers vacation credit for
time worked in 2000-2002, we're giving it to them now. That means
they're only being taxed on the money they're receiving this year
and no back taxes are actually owed. In other words, I think this
is a red herring and we shouldn't worry too much about it. But we
should run it by someone who knows this stuff before acting upon
it.

An couple of examples might make it easier to understand. Let's
say we go with proposals 1 and 2 above as stated.

At the end of 2003, Oso had accumulated 204 hours of vacation
(about 6.4 weeks). If he takes off four weeks this year, his
salary would be the same as if he didn't take the time off. The
only difference was how much he had to work to earn that money.

Vagrant has 36.3 hours coming to him right now. By the time he
quits at the end of May, it will be in the neighborhood of 47.5
hours (or about 2 weeks). In that case, he gets paid for about
two weeks of work when he leaves. That's money he owes taxes on,
but for this year, not for last year.

Now maybe a tax accountant will tell us that we owe taxes on
the money we'll eventually (someday maybe) get in the year we
accrued the hours, not the year we get paid for them. In that
event, it seems we could (temporarily) give the workers who
are owed back time a larger fraction for calculating this year's
vacation time to make up the difference. Again, we shouldn't get
too far into this unless we learn that it really is a problem.

Talk:Retroactive Vacation Credit - Revision history

Rfs at 20:43, 3 February 2005