A work-from-home stipend is money given to an employee, in addition to their base salary and benefits, to cover expenses incurred while working remotely.

People across the globe have become accustomed to working remotely.

They have more flexibility, spend less time commuting, and have greater work-life balance than ever before. That’s precisely why they don’t want to return to the office. According to Gallup’s most recent Global Indicator report:

• Fewer than 20% of remote-capable employees worldwide work on-site.
• Only 7% of them say they prefer to work on-site (93% prefer remote flexibility!).
• Employees who could do their jobs remotely but are required to be on-site have seen the biggest decline in engagement since 2020.
• Six in 10 remote workers say they’re extremely likely to job hunt if that remote flexibility is taken away.

And in 2024, RTO mandates from corporations like Disney, Apple, Starbucks, and Amazon sparked significant backlash.

Companies that adapt to the needs of their most important asset (their people!) are coming out on top as the best companies to work at.

The ideal method for supporting your remote employees (also the most flexible and scalable option for HR) is a remote work stipend, also known as a remote work allowance, remote employee reimbursement, or work-from-home stipend.

We developed this guide to give you everything you need to know about remote work stipends as an employer.

What is a Work-from-Home Stipend?

First, a definition:

A work-from home stipend is money given to an employee, in addition to their base salary and benefits to cover expenses incurred while working remotely.

A work-from-home stipend can be designed for employees in one or both ways:

1. To cover the costs an employee incurs while working from home. For example, employees can purchase home office equipment, a coworking pass, a new coffee pot, and anything else that makes their remote work locations comfortable, productive, or successful. It can be a continuous stipend to cover ongoing expenses, or administered as a one-time equipment stipend.
2. To purchase general perks that an on-site team can access, but a remote employee cannot, such as food, health and wellness, learning and development perks, etc.

Further details on what they are:

• They’re also sometimes called a ‘remote work stipend’ or ‘remote work allowance.’
• The composition includes both taxable and non-taxable items. Employers can either gross up the taxes for the employee or require the employees pay them.
• Stipends can be disbursed on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis.

Curious about what else can be classified under a remote work stipend?

Ready to Offer Work from Home Stipends to Your Team?

(Compt customers have 90% engagement rates!)

Talk with a Remote Stipends Expert

Benefits of Remote Work Stipends

Companies are embracing stipends and reimbursement policies to better support their employees.

The perk stipend model has numerous advantages, including benefit management, simplified tax handling, and enhanced business aspects like culture, talent retention, inclusivity, and employee engagement.

Remote work stipends are also highly sought after by HR and finance professionals as a valuable new lifestyle benefit.

Here are even more specific benefits of a remote stipend or reimbursement program:

Flexible for all remote work policies

One of the most impactful and relevant benefits of offering a remote stipend as a perk is that it’s adaptable for ANY working environment, whether you have a 100% remote team, a hybrid work model, or only certain remote/hybrid departments.

IRS compliance

If you use software like Compt, IRS compliance is automatically taken care of for you, making your HR and finance teams’ lives’ easier.

(Note: While it’s very common for companies under 100 employees to overlook the need to ensure tax compliance in their perk offerings, growing companies know how critical it is to have all employee compensation-related programs (like stipends) be done ‘by the book.’)

Better workstyle perks

Your team can access a broader range of benefits without increasing the overall budget. Because money is distributed directly to people, they can choose what’s best for them instead of picking a few perks everyone gets (but rarely everyone uses).

Enhance efficiency and reduce administrative burden

Stipends streamline HR operations by eliminating the complexities of vendor management and the need to oversee various software systems.

It is widely recognized that traditional perk offerings incur unnecessary expenses on two fronts:

1. Expenditures on perks that go unused
2. Significant time investments in selecting, piloting, procuring, managing, and communicating perks

Stipends eliminate all these inefficiencies, ensuring the timely delivery of individualized benefits. They also optimize resource allocation and minimize companies’ waste of financial and time-related expenses.

Strategic benefits for employers:

Remote work stipends offer strategic benefits for organizations that leadership loves by aligning with company culture and values, providing scalability, promoting mindful spending, and fostering deep connections with employees.

By tailoring your company’s perks to match your company’s culture and values, you can offer benefits that resonate with your employees on personal levels. Whether it’s a continuous learning stipend or a health and wellness stipend, they demonstrate your commitment to investing in these values.

They’re also scalable. As your company grows or goes through headcount changes, the inherent nature of stipends is their flexibility, which makes it easy to scale remote work investment up or down while keeping it relevant to your employees’ needs.

CFOs appreciate when money is invested well, and stipends ensure that happens. When employees are given the autonomy to choose how they allocate their funds, they become more deliberate in their spending decisions. The sense of responsibility stipends create encourages them to spend in ways that align better with their priorities.

Remote work stipends also enhance the connection between employers and their team — something that’s a lot harder to achieve without face-to-face interaction. When your people get to exercise autonomy in how and where they work, the relationship deepens.

Additional benefits of a remote work allowance:

• A remote work allowance ensures your company has access to a large pool of top talent, and can better retain talent who want more flexible work-from-home options.
• Employee engagement also increases. Employees satisfied with their benefits are 1.5 times more likely to be engaged, and WFH stipends cover critical bases for remote workers, both from a productivity and a wellness standpoint.
• What people purchase can relate to their home working space, work-life balance, mental health, or anything else that suits their always-evolving needs.
• Think about it like gift-giving: so many people aim for the ‘big reveal,’ but what people are really looking for is something they can actually use.

Psst: Weighing the pros and cons of perk software vendors? Check out our guide, Comparing Perk Stipend Software: Everything You Need to Know

If you’re still wondering why your remote team should have perks, here’s a piece detailing why your remote employees need support like your on-site team members. 

9 Examples of Real-Life Remote Work Stipends

Below are nine examples highlighting the unique approaches to remote work stipends, with varying remote work policies:

1) HubSpot: A hybrid-remote company provides their people:

• $1,000 stipend for their remote and hybrid people, plus wellness benefits employees can access from anywhere

Column: A company that offers 100% work-from-anywhere opportunities uses Compt to offer their team:

• A one-time stipend for new employees’ home office setup
• A quarterly stipend for internet bills, office equipment, and other productivity-related expenses
• An all-inclusive stipend covering whatever makes employees feel “healthy and whole.”

3) Basecamp: A fully remote company offers four stipends for their team members:

• $100/month coworking space stipend
• $100/month fitness allowance
• $100/month massage allowance
• $1,000/year continuing education allowance

4) Buffer: A fully-remote company offers several stipends as well:

• $1,000 one-off stipend to cover initial home office expenses
• A “Working Smarter” stipend to fund additional work-from-home needs (e.g., paying for a coworking space)
• $240 per year learning and development stipend (called the “Growth Mindset” fund)
• $250 per year AI tools stipend

5) Gusto: A hybrid team with many employees working from home, some or all of the time, offers two stipends:

• $500 one-time stipend to cover home office expenses
• $40/month internet stipend

6) Gimkit: A fully remote company offers the following stipend:

• $350/month working budget, which covers expenses like home office improvements, co-working spaces, and coffee shops
• $100 a month health and wellness stipend

7) Zillow: 90% of the workforce works from home at least part of the time:

• $450 one-time stipend for home office setup
• $150/month stipend to cover WFH-related costs

8) Calm: A remote-first company:

• $750 one-time stipend to create a comfortable and productive WFH workspace

What Expenses are Reimbursable in a Remote Work Stipend?

The answer to this isn’t as clear-cut as other stipend categories. It all depends on how you want to support your remote employees.

Below are some examples of eligible expenses for a work-from-home stipend:

• Cell phone bills
• Coworking space fees
• Office equipment (i.e., laptops, monitors, web cameras, computer accessories, etc.)
• Office furniture (i.e., desks, ergonomic chairs, bookcases, lighting, etc.)
• Office supplies (i.e., sticky notes, notebooks, printers, filing cabinets, planners, writing utensils, paper shredders, etc.)
• Headphones, Airpods, or noise-cancelling headphones
• Internet bills
• Music and podcast subscriptions
• Productivity apps for time management, work performance improvement
• High-speed internet
• Job-specific tools like Grammarly or Miro
• Professional development
• Electric and utility bills
• Meals or groceries
• Home office decorations like plants or art
• Under-desk treadmills or ellipticals

Psst: There are plenty of other things employees can buy with their work-from-home stipend. We’ve covered work-from-home stipend ideas at length.

Below are some examples of reimbursable expenses, if you are setting up your remote work stipend to cover similar perks offered to in-office employees:

• Health & Wellness
• Cell phone
• Learning & Development
• Family
• Food
• Travel
• Pets
• Tech/Equipment
• Student Loans
• Charitable Giving

With this approach, you can avoid building out a long list of vendors and initiatives you’ll cover. However, if you want to pick specific vendors with which employees can spend time, you may want to ​​take a vendor-based approach.

Do you have to reimburse your employees for remote work expenses?

The short answer is; it depends on where they live.

While there is no federal mandate for employers to cover the cost or reimburse their employees for work-related expenses, there are 11 states (and the District of Columbia) that do require reimbursement. (Note that federal law does require employers to reimburse for work-related expenses when these expenses drop the employee’s earnings below minimum wage). If your employees are in one of these locations, your organization could be subject to big penalties and consequences for failing to adhere to state mandates.

As of January 2025, here’s the list:

• California
• Illinois
• Iowa
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• Montana
• New Hampshire
• New York
• North Dakota
• Pennsylvania
• South Dakota

How to Set up a Remote Work Stipend

1. First, determine how much you want to offer your team members within what timeframe.

Some examples include offering $100/month, $500/quarterly, or $2,000 annually. According to our latest Lifestyle Benefits Benchmarking Report, Compt clients offer everything from $50 (at the low end) to $2,400 (at the high end) per employee per year.

Decide whether you want to offer a stipend only to remote team members or one in addition to what you offer all employees.

If you want insight into what the most successful companies do, we are happy to share examples and use cases our customers are seeing success with. Reach out to talk to a stipends expert today.

2. Secondly, select your stipend spending categories.

In the examples above, you’ll notice that they most often surround a category of spending like health and wellness, continuous learning, family, or travel.

Doing it this way allows you to create a custom program for your team and then allows 100% personalization for them.

If you’re looking for ideas for spending categories beyond a remote stipend, consider tying them to your company’s culture, goals, or important cultural initiatives.

3. Next, decide how you will manage the process.

Your options include:

Managing the remote work stipend manually

If you choose this option, be prepared to set up a process to track purchases, receipts, balances, approval, paid perks, and rejections or ones that need further review. Consider using Google forms to track submissions and Excel or Google Sheets to track progress, and create a process to track the nontaxable vs. taxable (for IRS compliance).

Choose stipend software to help you manage this

Options like Compt can help communicate your programs to your team members, track balances and spending, scale the process for you, automate a large portion of work, and provide valuable data insights around engagement and utilization. For situations where IRS compliance is a non-negotiable, Compt will make you and your finance team’s job much easier because it’s 100% IRS compliant.

Psst: If you’re looking for more information, we have written an in-depth guide to set up a lifestyle spending account here.

Other Types of Stipends

Below is a list of popular stipend categories:

• Cell phone reimbursement stipend
• Charitable giving
• Commuter stipend
• Equipment stipends
• Family stipends
• Internet stipend
• Learning & development stipend
• Meal or food stipends
• Pet care stipends
• Professional certification stipend
• Productivity stipends
• Remote work stipend
• Student loan stipend
• Travel & experience stipends
• Anniversary bonus
• Lifestyle Spending Account: Companies combine one or more of the above stipends to create a general perk stipend that gives employees even more flexibility to choose what matters to them, without increasing your budget.

Work-from-Home Stipend FAQs

1. Are work-from-home stipends taxable?

It depends on how you set your stipend program up and what the stipends are used for. When an employer provides a flat stipend without requiring employees to substantiate their expenses, this amount is generally considered taxable income. However, when employers reimburse employees for specific work-related expenses under an accountable plan, it isn’t.

2. What is a standard work-from-home stipend?

Because companies approach work-from-home stipends so differently, there’s no single typical example of a work-from-home stipend. Compt clients invest anywhere from $50 to $2,400 per employee per year for remote work expenses.

The structure also varies from company to company. Some give employees a one-time stipend to help them set up their home office (like Google, which gives remote employees a $1000 stipend to get their home offices up and running). Others opt for a monthly stipend (for example, $75 per month) to cover WFH-related costs, like internet, phone, and electricity. And some opt to do both.

Not only are the payment structures different, but the amount of the stipends can vary based on various factors-, such as the cost of living in the area where the employee works from home or whether the employee is fully remote or spends some time in the office.

3. Is an internet stipend taxable?

How a company pays for employees’ internet determines whether it’s taxable. Stipends are generally taxable, while reimbursements aren’t always. 

If a company gives an employee an internet stipend, it’s considered taxable. If you reimburse it as part of an accountable plan, though, it is not taxable (provided you’re getting receipts/expense reports from employees).

4. How many companies offer remote work stipends?

There’s no way to know exactly how many companies offer remote work stipends. For example, buildremote assembled a list of 101 companies that provide WFH stipends. But that list is by no means exhaustive and doesn’t include small companies offering various perks to their employees, including remote work stipends.

While it’s impossible to determine exactly how many companies offer WFH stipends, it is fair to say that the number of companies offering remote work stipends increased after COVID-19, when many companies shifted to full or partial remote operations.

Ready to make managing your remote work stipend a breeze?

With Compt’s stipend reimbursement software, you can easily create, automate, and manage your remote stipend programs while integrating with your existing payroll systems and track engagement rates in real time. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.

Editor’s Note: Originally published in 2020, this post has been recently updated for clarity and relevance for our readers.