Expense Reimbursement: What Remote Work Makes Mandatory

Federal law contains no general reimbursement right. The FLSA's rule is a floor: business expenses borne by the employee — equipment, tools, uniforms — cannot reduce effective pay below minimum wage or eat into owed overtime in any workweek. For minimum-wage-adjacent workers required to fund their own tools, that bites; for a salaried engineer it rarely does. Which is why the action is entirely in state law — and why an employer's exposure depends on the map built in the out-of-state hiring guide.

When the employer requires or expects remote work, the recurring candidates are: a reasonable share of home internet, a reasonable share of a personal cell phone used for work, required software and peripherals, and — less settled — home-office furniture and increased utilities. The California analysis doesn't ask whether the employee paid more because of work; it asks whether the expense was necessary to do the job. An employee required to take calls owes a phone; the employer owes a reasonable slice of it. Optional remote work (a genuinely available office, employee chooses home) weakens the claim — but 'genuinely available' is a fact question employers lose more often than they expect.

The clean design: company-issued equipment for the expensive items (laptop, monitor, headset — owned, tracked, returned per the remote work policy); a monthly stipend sized to the reasonable cost of phone and internet in your workforce, stated as covering those expenses; and an actual-expense claim path with receipts for anything beyond — the true-up that keeps a stipend lawful. Put submission deadlines in writing (Illinois lets you require them), pay reimbursements separately from wages so they stay out of the regular rate, and apply one standard nationally: administering fifty variants costs more than reimbursing everyone at the California standard.