H1B - Remote working from home in Canada during Coronavirus

USA H1B
#1

Went through the H1B Remote working blog post.

I am in a weird situation.
I was employed at Seattle and i live in Vancouver, Canada. I used to work for 4 days a week from Seattle before the Covid situation.

From first week of March i have been working from home in Vancouver, Canada. In the meanwhile the Seattle office has been shut down and all the employees are working from home. My colleagues on H1B have already got their LCA approved to work from home. But i dont know where this leaves me.

Does me working from home from Canada have any implication on my H1B status?
Does this have any taxation implication (i am already paying fedral taxes in US and Canadian income tax).

At this point the only reason to have H1B for me is so that i can travel to USA without being harassed at the border.

#2

If you have read the post on H1B salary in Canada, then you would know that there is no ‘H1B status’ if you are physically outside US.

Simple as that.

If your Employer is still paying you in USD in US using your SSN, then they need to figure out as to how to show you as US based employee in their accounts as you are not in US physically.

You cannot file an LCA at your home in Canada as it is not USA.

Talk to your Employer as each Employer’s appetite to allow you to work from outside US is different based on what their attorney suggests.

Some allow upto 6 months and some do not even take risk for a week. It varies.

#3

This is helpful information, Anil.

Can the employer let an employee work from outside US let’s say India in such a COVID situation as embassy is closed? This is out of hands of anyone. In this case, will it be ok to work from outside the US with US salary because all the belongings, tax, expenses are running in US like apartment, car, insurance, etc.

In case employer asks to switch to Indian payroll, does that impact H1 in any case as the stamping is still pending due to embassy being closed?

Thanks

#4

Hi @sarveshgupta

As mentioned in the article, the time to allow working from India while running US payroll varies with each Employer’s own capacity to take the risk.

You have to talk to them.

You can be paid in India by running payroll there. H1B is not affected by running Indian payroll.