Taxes have many purposes, and one of them is incentivizing preferred behaviors. Why should we discourage working from home? Is wasting a significant part of your life commuting to work really that good for the society? It's certainly not for the environment.
Also, there are many hidden drawbacks of working from home – it's more socially isolating, the work-life balance suffers, setting up a home office may be costly. I can imagine such a tax making working from home not worth it for lots of people.
Working from an office is certainly good for keeping the price of commercial real estate high. And if you’re a bank who loans money to people who buy/build commercial real estate with that money, and then the value of the commercial real estate falls... well you’d be in for a giant world of pain.
If people can’t repay their loans you’re now stuck with something worth a lot less than all that money you gave out. OOPS.
I’ve been wondering what banks are going to do about this one. It’s a long term trend happening much faster than anyone could predict.
Also, there are many hidden drawbacks of working from home – it's more socially isolating, the work-life balance suffers, setting up a home office may be costly. I can imagine such a tax making working from home not worth it for lots of people.