Towns for Telecommuting
There's an interesting group advocating for telecommuting these days -- rural town governments.
Apparently, rural towns have had a population problem of late -- as young people these days don't tend to want to work on the farm, and all the information-worker jobs are found in large cities, people tend to leave small towns for the city or the suburbs. Many of them want to live in a small town (or to return to one when they have children), but there's not a lot of demand for, say, an Enterprise Architect in a town whose largest employer employs maybe a dozen people.
Telecommuting to jobs in large cities is an obvious benefit to the workers, who get to live where they want -- at substantially lower living cost, plus without the costs of commuting -- while getting a job that's not available in that area. The benefit to the town is less obvious but no less real: "People who telecommute, live and work here, are the best of both worlds. They're big earners and they spend the money in town," says Dave Wilson, quoted in the article above. He recruits for Kansas City and Wichita companies in tiny Sterling, Kansas. It's a way for companies to bring high-income residents (with the local economic input and tax revenue that that provides) to town without having to lure employers (a task that often requires giving them huge government handouts, in the form of discounted leases, long-term tax breaks, etc.)
Right now, a lot of these employes are probably virtual call center employees, which while not the highest-earning thing out there is at least a "real" job you can do from home (as opposed to the mountains of envelope-stuffing "work from home" scams.) However, there are definitely some other things out there that are employing virtual workers.
There are, however, some roadblocks. While towns may be eager to lure telecommuters to reap tax benefits, state governments are fond of reaping tax benefits, too, and the law doesn't always favor telecommuting. The Telework Coalition is trying to get a law passed to change the situation, but as it stands now, people telecommuting across state lines may end up paying state income tax twice. The issue is that some states (e.g. New York) require state income tax to be collected on all wage income paid out by employers in the state, even if the worker resides in the other state. But some states require state income tax to be collected on all income earned in the state -- even if it was from an out-of-state employer! While this isn't a problem if you live or work in a state with no state income tax (e.g. Washington), or for an employer in the same state, it does discourage companies from organized telework programs.
This said, I'd find an extra 1-2% state income tax a pretty small price to pay to give up commuting -- especially since commuting costs me more than that now.