I live, and work, in the UK for a US based IT company. One of our UK employees lived and worked from the US for a period of time. This was not official i.e. she didn’t inform the Company.
When she returned to the UK she was tracked down by the IRS and presented with a tax bill. She asked the Company we work for to pay the taxes. The world fell down around her.
As somebody else has mentioned, using a VPN to spoof your location is, by far, the least of your concerns.
I strongly suggest you reconsider your employment. There’s so much that can go wrong from this, with major legal consequences if something goes wrong. Even something as basic as corporate data security laws/policies can be violated from operating outside of the agreed place of business.
Even if you got that, even if she appears in Canada remote jobs do require for people to be able to go to the office from time to time for stuff like Town Halls or Meetings or stuff like that.
Even 100% remote works. So if you’re willing to go for a trip every once in a while there’ another thing to consider:
Companies tend to have their own VPNs for work (in my experience) within the work laptop and they’re necessary for you to work. You’d have to find that out first.
Rather than give you advice about taxes and ethics like many here, I’ll just give you a tip about the VPN service. Not all VPN providers allow you to choose specific servers (by cities or provinces). Some only give you the ‘Canada server’ option and you get what you get. So if this is important, make sure you research that aspect for any provider you are considering.
You’re saying she needs to lie to the company she works for, and tells them she lives in Canada, and that you need to help fake her computer location to Canada so they never find out you’re actually living in the US?
If she gets a company provided laptop she will likely not have admin rights, which is required to install any sort of VPN service or even to change IP address settings to use a VPN router and point it to a specific gateway.
Also, she may be required to log on to a Company VPN to access local network resources and there is a good chance they will block access to their VPN when coming from a commercial VPN provider. I would.
I would just log in without VPN, most companies really don’t care where you are remotely as long as you are legally allowed to work for the company.
Can anyone help me with our situation which is related to this thread?
My wife and I live in Canada and are Canadian citizens. We both have 100% work from home jobs and my wife just started her WFH job.
We are planning on taking 3 months to travel the US in an RV while continuing to work while on the road. My employer doesn’t care where I am but hers might. She has to log into her company VPN everyday however we are trying to find a way to mask our location to appear in Canada. Is this possible?
All these posts reference the tax implications but we are not planning of moving to the US just yet l, only temp travel
Likely your companies own VPN will detect its routing itself through another VPN service to spoof. This was less common in pre covid world. Also, good luck with the IRS.
Wow I’m looking into the same thing right now. My job is going to be 100% remote and I want to work ~300 miles (5 hour drive) outside of where I am “supposed to” but cannot simply install a VPN on the work computer (need permissions to install anything), in general, do you think there is a way for me to do this? Not worried about different countries etc, its the same state in the US, just big and would need my location to show closer to a different city than the one I would be in.
Answering your question specifically: i would look into a Router that allows with to install a VPN Tunnel directly there, and a VPN service that can run in a Router (since company Laptops might track stuff you install there). That way every Laptop, Smartphone etc that connects there will have a Canadian IP. For instance GL.iNet routers support this feature, and “most known VPNs” too. I would probably look for better Router/VPN though, since your needs are also somewhat different than my known case.
That being said, 95% of the comments here might have a point, and you should first get some advise on the Taxes implications, and possible consequences.
You technically can, you need a travel router with VPN capability (look at Gl iNet brand ) and either you can buy a dedicated IP from a VPN or if you want complete stealth mode, get someone in the US to host a VPN server for you at their house (again, look at Brume 2).
You connect to your friends house and all traffic gets pushed through that residential IP.
But there can be tax consequences if IRS or said company finds out
Oh please, this is laughable. You’d have to be smarter than the employer’s Sysadmins and Network admins. At my company we set up laptops to be on-domain, and so we have full control, including sending alerts when the IP address is not constant.
You’d have to be veeeery savvy to get through what you asked unnoticed. Like setting up your own server that your VPN router uses for VNF which would require internet service provider permissions, and which is impossible unless you’re setting up a secret service temporary network for a traveling president. You’re looking at more problems than what the benefits would be. Both legal and ethical. Just be honest to yourself.
I need the exact same thing but for one day. I’ve already used up all my vacation days and I have asked my manager if I could work from a US location for just one day so I can go to a place I like for our wedding anniversary and the answer was no. So now I’m figuring out how I can maybe show my home ip address when logging in or any Canada ip address so I can get by for one day.
Correct. If you are a non-US tax payer but you are doing business with a US Company while you are on US soil then you are considered a tax payer. However, if you are a non-US tax payer are you are doing business with non US-based company while in the US, then you are not liable for US taxes (at least for 6 months).