Does this mean that people who were approved for remote work will be forced to come back into the office? Or that people who are supposed to come into the office Jan 2022 will continue to have to come into the office in Jan 2022 (i.e., no change).
My employer doesn't ask me where I've established residency, they ask for my "Home address", and if I can't find anything in our employee manual describing what a home address is other than "where you can receive mail". I don't know what Google's policy is.
In the US, your W-2 employer has to withhold your taxes on behalf of the state so they have to have your legal residence. I suppose you could file a tax return where you later claim that you weren't really a NY resident but a CT resident, but then you're going to have to file taxes with CT and pay out of pocket with penalties (since you were supposed to have them withheld from your paycheck) and NY will probably dispute your return, as they have documented proof of you being a NY resident. Especially if your income is high, which will be the case for many Google employees, it's a bad idea to have your residency in that dispute state where multiple states can claim you as a resident.
You can prove to either CT or NY that it's not your primary residence for tax purposes, but even if you can't, you may still be better off paying double taxes to avoid a 15 - 20% pay cut.
The pay cut mentioned for Connecticut is 15% and that likely doesn't cover the RSU, so the realistic cut in the pay rate may be more like 5-10%, depending on your function and level. NYC marginal tax rate for a typical Google employee is going to be around 10%. And that's before you take into account the actual cost of this scheme.
I put the "developed world" declaimer as I figured in some poor countries you wouldn't be able to get good treatment without paying for it but I imagine even then you will not pay as much as in the US.
Generally free or not available at all to that specific patient, no? At least from the publicly funded system; some Western European countries also allow private practice of medicine where the availability criteria are different.
If it's a treatment that is required for the patient to survive it will generally be available & free. E.g. getting cancer treatments here will be free & almost certainly expensive in the US (even with insurance they will find something the insurance doesn't cover, and/or will charge you for stuff like ambulance rides).
There may be some rare exceptions where you'd be able to pay a lot of money in the US for some experimental treatment not yet available in the public EU system but this is the exception not the rule. What you possibly won't get for free are non-critical treatments.
I will give one declaimer though that I live in Germany & the healthcare system is not in the same quality/extensiveness throughout the EU (the German system is among the best).
