Businesses are losing a ton of money as a result of “stealth workers” misrepresenting to their employers about where they work.

Nowadays, some remote employees are taking unpaid time off from the headquarters of their companies, and managers are noticing.

Since those who worked from home were found to be just as productive, the epidemic called into question the notion that the office was a necessary component of the job. Some people enjoyed their newfound independence from their desks, which led to the emergence of an increasing number of digital nomads who worked from unconventional living arrangements like a van on the road or from Airbnbs in nations like Portugal that grant digital nomad visas.

But as businesses strive for a return to the office, such flexibility has been restricted. Some employees aren’t willing to give up their travels so easy because they’d rather keep up their level of living and work-life balance.

Here come the so-called “stealth workers,” employees willing to go above and beyond to conceal the fact that they reside more than a mile away from the headquarters of their employer. According to Bloomberg, these workers routinely move to more affordable places while concealing their whereabouts by using a VPN, signing in as early as two in the morning to hide their actual time zone, and lying about their address.

According to Callum Borchers of The Wall Street Journal, some digital nomads will even dress warmly to give the impression that they are enduring the cold where their job is situated rather than wherever they are now living.

In a survey conducted by Future Forum in February 2022, 95% of knowledge workers said they had a hard time letting go of their need for flexibility. Less than three-quarters of respondents said they were most concerned about location flexibility.

However, the lengths some go to in order to maintain remote work on their terms may seem like a major annoyance for the employee—but it’s turning out to be a much bigger issue for the company. The reality of being subjected to legal liabilities, cybersecurity concerns, taxes, and fees if an employee is located in a state or country where the business isn’t registered properly is becoming more real. In the early days of the pandemic, companies were less concerned about their employees working under the palm trees of Tulum or the increasingly crowded coves in Greece.

According to Chantel Rowe, vice president of product management at Topia, “The COVID free pass is running out.” Companies are complaining that they already have a lot to deal with without tax and immigration authorities clamping down on them.

Employee secrets are being revealed through tattling tax return forms. The CEO of Virginia-based recruiting app GravyWork, Alex Atwood, informed Borchers that one of his “stealth workers” who had performed work in Texas and California without his knowledge had cost him up to $30,000 in taxes and fees because those states didn’t recognize GravyWork as a legal entity. He calculated the total cost to be closer to $500,000 when accounting for lost productivity.

One employee also disclosed to Borchers that the remote position they had applied for had a three-month maximum working abroad restriction. Everything is demonstrating that there is a distinction between working from home and working remotely.

A remote employment doesn’t necessarily mean you can work from a different part of the world because corporations are liable to varying taxes and compensation insurance depending on the state—or country—in which they operate. Stealth workers demonstrate that there is a lesser war happening on what remote employment actually entails while the conflict between employers and employees is frequently focused on the return to the workplace.