Perry Cooper & Danielle Muoio Dunn (Bloomberg Law): Law Professor Takes Another Swing at New York Remote Worker Tax

A challenge to New York’s taxation of remote workers heads to court on June 1, in a case tax attorneys say will have to get to the US Supreme Court before there’s any real change.

Edward Zelinsky, a Cardozo Law professor, will try to convince the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department that the state owes him a refund for taxes imposed on his income when he worked remotely from his Connecticut home in 2019 and 2020, including when he couldn’t access his classroom because of Covid-19 restrictions. Under New York’s “convenience of the employer rule,” the state can tax the income of nonresidents who work remotely for New York-based companies unless they are required to telework by their employer.

Tax attorneys criticized the state’s arguments while conceding the court is unlikely to rule differently than in the past.

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Yet the state goes into oral arguments with a strong position because New York courts have a history of being “extremely deferential to the state’s interpretation of its ability to tax people,” Wilford said.

None of the courts that considered Zelinsky’s prior challenge reached the constitutional questions at the heart of his arguments—that New York violates the federal due process and commerce clauses by taxing activity beyond its borders.

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O’Leary said the New York Tax Appeals Tribunal avoided a slippery slope in its 2025 decision in favor of the state, by cutting the loose language in the administrative law judge’s 2023 ruling that Zelinsky’s “virtual presence” in New York by teaching remotely through electronics created a nexus with the state.

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The case is Zelinsky v. Tax’n & Fin. Comm’r, N.Y. App. Div., 3d Dep’t, No. CV-25-1156, oral arguments scheduled for 6/1/26 .