What Remote Work Actually Saves, Once Heating Is Counted

The saving is almost entirely the commute, and it is not close

The argument that home energy cancels the commuting saving is repeated so often that it is worth simply pricing. One worker, two remote days a week, 88 remote days a year of which 50 fall in the heating season, eighteen kilometres each way, fuel costing 12 cents a kilometre. Fuel not burnt: 88 × 2 × 18 × 0.12 = 380.16 euros. That is the whole of the upside in this case, and everything else in the calculation is small beside it.

One caution about that number before it is used anywhere else. Fuel is the only motoring cost that a remote day actually removes. Insurance, road tax, the loan on the car and most of its depreciation are annual costs that do not notice which days you drove, and a mileage scale that includes them — the sort used to reimburse business travel — overstates the saving by a factor of three or more. If remote work is going to change what your car costs, it does so by letting you own a smaller car or none, which is a decision and not a side effect.

Heating: the honest arithmetic, and the one number you have to supply

The extra heat is the difference between a home set back while everyone is out and a home held at comfort temperature all day. Model it with three quantities: the dwelling's heat loss coefficient in watts per kelvin, the extra degrees of setpoint, and the hours. Take 120 watts per kelvin — a moderately insulated flat of around ninety square metres — three degrees, and nine hours: 120 × 3 × 9 = 3,240 watt hours, or 3.24 kilowatt hours of heat a day. That coefficient is the one number nobody publishes for you. It is an assumption, it varies by a factor of three between a new build and an uninsulated house, and it is where you should spend your scepticism. Everything after it is priced from published data.

Turning heat into money depends entirely on how you make it. Through a gas boiler at 90 % efficiency, 3.24 kilowatt hours of heat needs 3.60 of gas. Eurostat's semi-annual household price series puts household gas including all taxes and levies at 0.1436 euros a kilowatt hour in France, 0.1223 in Germany and 0.0955 in Spain in the second half of 2025 — so the daily heating increment is 52 cents in France, 44 in Germany and 34 in Spain. Direct electric heating is the worst case, because it needs the full 3.24 kilowatt hours at a household electricity price of 0.2561 in France, 0.3869 in Germany and 0.2669 in Spain: 83 cents, 1.25 euros and 86 cents. A heat pump at a seasonal efficiency of three is the best, needing only 1.08 kilowatt hours: 28, 42 and 29 cents. Add the laptop, the screen and a lamp — 120 watts for nine hours is 1.08 kilowatt hours, another 28, 42 and 29 cents.

Set that against a commute and the comparison stops being close. At 12 cents a kilometre of fuel, the incremental home cost of a remote day is repaid by 3.3 kilometres each way in France, 3.6 in Germany and 2.6 in Spain on gas heating; 2.3, 3.5 and 2.4 with a heat pump; and even on direct electric heating at the German price — the most expensive combination in this article — 7.0 kilometres. Almost nobody commutes seven kilometres by car. That is the finding, and it is the opposite of the received wisdom.

The case that really does go the other way: the season ticket

Everything above rests on one property of driving: the cost is variable, so not making the journey removes it. A monthly or annual transport pass has the opposite shape. It is a fixed cost, paid whether you travel twenty days or twelve, and remote work removes none of it. A pass holder who keeps the pass saves nothing at all on the commute while still paying the 25.85 euros of heating and the 24.34 euros of electricity — a net loss of 50.19 euros a year in the worked case. This is the situation the sceptics are describing, and it is real. It is just not general.

Two things change it. Giving up the pass and buying single tickets converts the fixed cost into a variable one, which is worth doing above a certain number of remote days and worth computing before assuming. And an employer allowance covers the gap easily: on the French exemption ceiling for two remote days a week, 22 euros a month or 264 a year, the same pass holder ends 213.81 euros ahead rather than 50.19 behind. In other words, for the group of workers whose commute is a fixed cost, the entire economics of remote work is the allowance.

Germany: the tax system pushes the other way

Germany prices both states of the world and prices the office higher. A day at home is worth a flat 6 euros under paragraph 4 subsection 5 sentence 1 number 6c of the income tax act, available only for days on which the work is done mainly at home and no first place of work outside it is visited. A day at the office is worth the commuting allowance, which from the 2026 assessment year is 0.38 euros for every full kilometre from the first — the Steueränderungsgesetz 2025, published in the federal gazette on 23 December 2025, abolished the old two-tier structure where the first twenty kilometres were worth only 30 cents. Set the two against each other and the crossover is 6 ÷ 0.38 = 15.79 kilometres one way. Beyond that distance, every day you stay at home is worth less on the tax return than a day you drive in.

In the worked case the effect is small but negative. Two hundred and twenty office days at eighteen kilometres would give a deduction of 1,504.80 euros; 132 office days plus 88 home days gives 132 × 18 × 0.38 + 88 × 6 = 1,430.88, a reduction of 73.92 euros, worth about 22 euros of tax at a 30 % marginal rate and 31 at 42 %. Set beside the 321 euros of fuel and energy the same worker gains, it does not change the answer — but it does mean the German state is, quietly and by arithmetic rather than by intent, paying people to drive.

The ceiling makes it starker. The German home-office allowance stops at 1,260 euros a year, which is 210 days at 6 euros, and every employee already has an automatic lump-sum deduction of 1,230 euros under paragraph 9a. So the maximum a full-time remote worker with no other work costs can gain is 1,260 − 1,230 = 30 euros of extra deduction, worth about 9 euros of tax at a 30 % marginal rate. Read the other way, it takes 205 days at home merely to reach the deduction you had for free. Whatever the case for working from home in Germany, the tax return is not it.

Who has to pay for it: three legal answers, and only one names a figure

France is the one people get wrong. The labour code used to oblige an employer to bear all the costs arising directly from telework — and that provision was repealed by an ordonnance of 22 September 2017. What survives in article L.1222-10 is three duties and none of them is financial: inform the employee of restrictions on the use of IT equipment, give priority for a non-telework post, and hold an annual interview on working conditions and workload. The obligation is real all the same, but it comes from elsewhere: a general rule stated by the Cour de cassation that professional expenses incurred by an employee must be borne by the employer, reinforced by article 3.1.5 of the national interprofessional agreement of 26 November 2020, which was extended by an arrêté of 2 April 2021 and therefore binds beyond its signatories.

The French figures everyone quotes are not that obligation, they are its tax ceiling. For 2026 the social security collection agency exempts an allowance of up to 11.00 euros a month for each day of weekly telework, or 2.70 euros a day, capped at 59.40 euros a month; where a collective agreement provides for it, the limits rise to 13.20 euros a month per weekly day, or 3.30 a day, capped at 72.60 a month. A separate 55.20 euros a month covers the employee's own IT equipment. These are limits on what escapes contributions, not entitlements — your right to be paid comes from your agreement, and the ceiling only says how much of it is free of charges.

Germany and Spain sit at the two extremes. German law contains no right to work from home and no duty to fund it; where the work is performed remains the employer's call under the trade regulation code, and the workplace ordinance's definition of a fixed teleworking station — which does require the employer to provide and install the furniture and equipment — is a definition rather than a duty, so an employer who provides nothing has simply not created one. Spain goes furthest: article 12 of the law on distance working of 9 July 2021 says the development of remote work must be paid for or compensated by the company and that the worker may not bear the costs of the equipment and means tied to the job. It applies once remote work reaches 30 % of the working day over a three-month reference period — two days in five. And it names no figure at all, leaving the amount to collective bargaining. The strongest obligation of the three is also the least quantified.

Frequently asked questions

Does my employer have to pay me a remote-work allowance?

It depends on the country, and the three answers are genuinely different. In Spain, yes: article 12 of the 2021 law on distance working says the company must pay or compensate for it, and the worker may not bear the costs of the equipment and means tied to the job — though it applies only once remote work reaches 30 % of the working day over a three-month reference period, and it names no amount, leaving that to collective bargaining. In France the labour code's own cost provision was repealed in 2017, but the obligation survives through a general rule of case law that professional expenses fall on the employer, reinforced by an extended national agreement. In Germany there is no such duty at all — only a tax deduction you claim yourself.

Will my heating bill really go up as much as people say?

Almost certainly not, and the number is easy to bound. The increment is your dwelling's heat loss coefficient times the extra degrees times the hours. At 120 watts per kelvin, three degrees and nine hours that is 3.24 kilowatt hours of heat a day, which a 90 % gas boiler turns into 3.60 kilowatt hours of gas — about 52 cents a day at the French household gas price of 0.1436 in the second half of 2025. Over fifty heating-season days that is 25.85 euros a year. Three things can multiply it: a badly insulated home, which raises the coefficient; direct electric heating, which takes it to 83 cents a day in France and 1.25 in Germany; and a home that was previously empty all day rather than merely set back. Even so, the worst combination here comes to seven kilometres of driving a day.

I have a season ticket. Does remote work save me anything at all?

Not on transport, and that is the honest answer. A pass is a fixed cost: it costs the same whether you make forty journeys a month or twenty-four, so the days you stay at home remove nothing. Meanwhile you still pay the extra heating and electricity, which in the worked case is 50.19 euros a year — so a pass holder with no employer allowance is a little worse off, not better. Two ways out. Price the alternative: at some number of remote days a month, single tickets beat the pass, and the crossing point is arithmetic you can do in five minutes with your own fares. Or ask for the allowance, which at the French exemption ceiling for two days a week is 264 euros a year and turns the same case from 50.19 euros down into 213.81 up.

Is working from home good or bad for my German tax return?

Bad, above a short commute, and the arithmetic is unambiguous. A home day is worth a flat 6 euros; an office day is worth 0.38 euros for every full kilometre from the first from the 2026 assessment year. Divide and the crossover is 15.79 kilometres one way — beyond that, staying at home costs you deduction. There is also a ceiling with an awkward property: the home-office allowance stops at 1,260 euros a year, 210 days at 6, while every employee already receives an automatic lump-sum deduction of 1,230 euros. So the very best a full-time remote worker with no other work costs can do is 30 euros of extra deduction, worth about 9 euros of tax. This is a reason to check your figures, not a reason to commute — the fuel saving in the same case is more than ten times larger than the tax lost.

What about the desk, the chair and the second screen?

It is a one-off cost with an ongoing effect, so amortise it before comparing. Six hundred euros of desk, chair and screen spread over five years is 120 euros a year, which is a little over a third of the 329.97-euro annual saving in the worked French case with no allowance — material, but not decisive, and it stops after year five. Who should pay for it is a separate question with the same three answers as the allowance: in Spain the employer must provide the equipment; in France the collection agency exempts a further 55.20 euros a month for 2026 where the employee uses their own IT equipment, which tells you the practice is expected; and in Germany the workplace ordinance requires the employer to provide and install the furniture and equipment only where a fixed teleworking station has actually been set up, which an employer who provides nothing has by definition not done.