Evan Crosby | Contributor

If you are searching for a work from home home, then you might be searching for employers hiring remote workers in major West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and even San Diego.

However, you may want to look a bit more inland. Take the Inland Empire, for example. According to Indeed, employers in the Riverside and San Bernardino metro have over 1,200 remote job openings.

Here is a sampling of 10 Riverside area companies hiring to fill virtual positions.

1. Invitae – Medical Records Specialist

Invitate has an opening for a medical records specialist. This work from home job pays between $21 and $26 an hour.

2. Word & Brown Companies – FastTrack Representative

Word & Brown Companies is recruiting a full-time remote FastTrack rep for a processing and data entry role. The position pays around $18 an hour.

3. California Department of Housing and Community Development

This state agency is hiring a staff services analyst for what can be a telework position. The salary range for this job is $3,500 to $5,700 a month.

4. Closets by Design – Sales Designer

Closets by Design is seeking a part-time sales designer. The virtual role pays between $3,000 and $5,000 a month.

5. Inland Empire Health Plans – Delegation Oversight Nurse

Inland Empire Health Plans is recruiting an RN for a delegation oversight nurse role. This work from home job likely pays between $71,000 and $90,000 a year, according to Indeed’s salary estimate for this position in Rancho Cucamonga.

6. SecureSpace Self Storage – Operations Project Assistant

SecureSpace Self Storage has an opening for a remote operations project assistant. This full-time role pays around $29 an hour.

7. Torrid – DevOps Manager

Torrid is hiring a virtual Dev Ops manager. The salary range for this position is $126,000 to $159,000 a year.

8. Options for Youth Public Charger Schools – Online Program Math Tutor

This educational organization is seeking a virtual math tutor. This part-time roel pays between $20 and $25 an hour.

9. Southern California Edison – Quality Assurance Process Improvement Specialist

SCE is recruiting a full-time quality assurance process improvement specialist. The likely compensation range for this work from home job is $70,000 to $89,000 a year, according to Indeed.

10. Quest Diagnostics – Client Services Representative I

Finally, Quest Diagnostics is seeking a remote client services rep. The full-time position pays up to $24 an hour.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have pulled off a quiet first in their newly signed legislation addressing climate change and health care: the creation of a tax on stock buybacks, a cherished tool of Corporate America that had long seemed untouchable.

Under the bill President Joe Biden signed into law Tuesday, companies will face a new 1% excise tax on purchases of their own shares, effectively paying a penalty for a maneuver that they have long used to return cash to investors and bolster their stock price. The tax takes effect in 2023.

Buybacks have ballooned in recent years — they’re forecast to reach $1 trillion in 2022 — as companies have swelled with cash from sky-high profits.

Investors, including pension and retirement funds, like the buybacks. But fiery critics of big corporations and Wall Street like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders loathe them, calling the practice “paper manipulation” to enrich senior executives and big shareholders.

Centrist Democrats, too, such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have long criticized buybacks.

Democrats say that instead of returning cash to shareholders, big companies should use the money to increase employees’ wages or invest in the business. They are hoping the excise tax — it’s projected to bring the government an additional $74 billion in revenue over 10 years — will cause a major shift in corporate behavior.

But some experts are skeptical that the tax will work as intended. They note that businesses have other methods for rewarding shareholders, raising the prospect that legislation aimed at halting one corporate stock practice could instead facilitate another, with new and unpredictable effects on the economy.

How it all plays out could be significant for the future landscape of big U.S. companies, their employees and their shareholders, and for the political staying power of one of the signature legislative initiatives of Biden and his Democratic majorities in Congress.

Where stock buybacks stand as the Democratic bill becomes law:

BUYBACK BONANZA

The major companies in the S&P 500 index bought a record amount of their own stock last year, $882 billion. Their buybacks reached $984 billion in the 12 months ended in March, another record.

Among the biggest repurchasers of stock are Big Tech companies such as Apple, Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet.

Companies have been plowing more of their cash into buying their own stock even as they’ve grappled with rising inflation, higher interest rates and the potential for stunted economic growth. They’ve faced higher expenses for raw materials, shipping and labor. Companies have largely been able to pass those costs on to their customers, but higher prices for food, clothing and everything else could threaten consumer spending — with resulting crimped sales growth for many companies. Americans are still spending, though more tepidly, the latest government reports show.

Buybacks can increase companies’ earnings per share because there are fewer shares universally held by shareholders. The buybacks can also signal confidence from executives about a company’s financial prospects.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE TAX?

“I hate stock buybacks,” Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters as the legislative package advanced through Congress. “I think they’re one of the most self-serving things that Corporate America does, instead of investing in workers and training and research and equipment.”

That makes for appealing election-year rhetoric, but whether the Democrats’ aspiration will translate into different business behavior is less clear.

It’s an admirable policy goal, says Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who calls the new excise tax on buybacks “efficient, fair and easily administered.”

But will the goal be achieved? Rosenthal noted that in the wake of the 2017 Republican tax law, which gave companies a cash windfall by slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a wave of buybacks ensued. After the new excise tax goes into effect, companies might use some of the money they would have spent on buybacks to pay more dividends to shareholders instead, he suggested. The new tax puts buybacks closer to an equal tax footing with dividends.

Rosenthal doesn’t rule out, though, that companies decide to put some of the saved money into raising workers’ pay or investing in the business.

Counterpoint: The tax “is not going to translate into higher pay for workers,” said Jesse Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who is an expert on corporate governance. And investing money back into the business may not be an option, he said, because “investment is already at very high levels, and there’s no indication that companies aren’t pursuing worthwhile projects because they lack the cash.”

In the end, Fried expects that most of the money not spent on buybacks would end up being added to the pile of some $8 trillion in cash that U.S. companies are sitting on.

A MODEST HIT?

Because the new excise tax will be calculated on the smaller, net amount of a company’s buybacks — total repurchases minus shares issued during the year — some companies may see it as modest hit worth taking and continue purchasing stock.

The tax won’t apply to stock contributed to retirement accounts, pensions and employee stock-ownership plans.

After surveying its analysts about the tax, RBC Capital Markets suggested that companies may grumble about it, but “it’s unlikely to impact planning.”

One thing is all but certain: With the new tax scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, companies have a deadline for buying back their stock tax-free. That means a flurry of buybacks could come in the months ahead.

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After the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion that’s been in place for half a century, companies like Amazon, Disney, Apple and JP Morgan pledged to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where the procedure is now illegal so they can terminate pregnancies.

But the companies gave scant or no details on how they will do this and it’s not clear if they will be able to — legally — while protecting employees’ privacy and keeping them safe from prosecution.

“Most employers were not prepared for Roe to be overturned, and even those that were didn’t realize the law would literally be changed the next minute,” said Brian Kropp, a vice president at the consulting firm Gartner. “They’re trying to play catch-up.”

Kropp said many companies announced plans to offer travel benefits without the infrastructure in place to make them work. Some, he added, are creating supplementary policies that employees can buy to cover abortion travel, while others are contacting insurers to see if travel can be added to their current plans. Others are trying to figure out how to offer a benefit without breaching employees’ privacy.

“Are employees going to have to tell their manager they are going to have to travel from Texas to California to have an abortion?” Kropp said.

The answer is no — but they would likely have to tell human resources or a similar department that they are pregnant and want to get an abortion, said Sharona Hoffman, a health law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The company or its health insurer would then provide money upfront or a reimbursement after the fact.

Hoffman called the travel cost pledges a “generous benefit” from companies, and said she would not be surprised “if this becomes a practice that more companies undertake — just without trumpeting it,” for fear of the backlash that can come with public statements on a divisive issue such as abortion.

“It’s not necessarily altruistic,” she said. “It also makes some sense for companies to not have a bunch of employees that are highly distressed because they have unwanted pregnancies and have to carry the child to term.”

For now, most big companies offering an abortion travel benefit will likely add it to existing health care plans, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a partner with the law firm Morgan Lewis who helps companies develop and maintain their benefits.

Big companies are generally self-insured, which means they pay for all claims and have more flexibility to decide what the plans will cover. A third party then processes the claims on their behalf.

That’s the case at outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which updated its health coverage last fall to add travel costs for employees after Texas’s law banning most abortions went into effect. Patagonia said abortion and travel costs are administered in the same manner as other medical services, ensuring confidentiality for employees.

Restaurant review company Yelp said its abortion travel benefit is also administered by its health insurance provider. Yelp has told its employees that if they do use the travel benefit, Yelp will not have access to the details of the service.

Microsoft, meanwhile, noted that it already covers abortion, as well as gender-affirming care, for its employees and has now extended the coverage to include travel expenses for “these and other lawful medical services” if they are not available in an employee’s home state.

Smaller companies may have fewer options. They typically buy health insurance for their employees from insurers that are subject to state regulations. Those companies have less flexibility to design benefits, and they may operate in states that ban abortion.

Dr. Ami Parekh, chief health officer at Included Health, which offers health care navigation services and virtual care for employers, said it is “quite a scramble” right now for large employers to navigate this fast-moving landscape.

“They’re moving as fast as they can,” Parekh said. “And I bet you they’re going to be nimble and change as needed as things come up.”

For instance, some companies are offering to pay for a partner to travel with the person getting the abortion.

With the legal landscape shifting quickly, even adding travel benefits to a current medical plan carries some risk. In May, 14 state lawmakers in Texas sent a letter to Lyft warning the company to rescind its abortion travel benefit, saying they plan to introduce legislation that would ban companies from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions or reimburse abortion-related expenses.

That said, no such legislation has been enacted as of now in Texas or anywhere else. It is also not against the law to travel to states where abortion is legal, Hoffman noted. There are efforts afoot, however, to change that.

And while the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, protects sensitive patient information, it can be overruled in cases where a crime has been committed. That’s the case now in states where abortion has become a crime.

“It’s challenging for employers to navigate what is a rapidly evolving legal landscape,” said Sharon Masling, the head of Morgan Lewis’s reproductive rights task force. “There’s going to be a lot of litigation over the next few years.”

Beyond the legal questions, abortion travel benefits also present some thorny workplace issues, Kropp said. Employees who don’t support abortion may be angry that their company is paying for other employees’ travel, for example. Even those who do support abortion may question why the company isn’t paying them to travel for fertility treatments or transgender health care, he said.

This is why it’s likely, experts say that some companies are offering travel benefits but aren’t making public announcements about it.

“My sense is most employers are trying to very quickly figure out what’s best for their employees and dependents,” Parekh said. “And not all employers want to spend the energy to be very public about that at this moment in time.”

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