Your boss is mixing apples and oranges. It certainly IS cheaper to hire a freelancer than to have a full-time employee on staff, especially when you figure that the cost of insurance and other benefits increases your salary cost by about one-third.

But there are three potential problems with this change:

- First, depending on what the freelancer charges and how much he/she is used, the total cost over the course of a year might equal or even exceed the cost to keep you on the payroll, even including those benefits costs;

- If a freelancer is in fact kept busy almost full-time by your company, and is working so closely with the company that he/she is in effect an employee, then the IRS and other regulators say the freelancer IS an employee - and is entitled to all those benefits. So, the cost of using the freelancer isn't any less than having the employee;

- The decision to allow you to telecommute shouldn't be based on cost alone, unless for some reason you need some highly specialized or expensive equipment at home that adds dramatically to the cost of supporting you remotely.

Also, you have an advantage as an employee of knowing the company, knowing how things get done, and (I hope) having established a reputation as a trusted, valued employee. Most of that is lost when a freelancer is hired. And if you can think of ways in which your telecommuting for a few days a week will actually help you do your job better (e.g., being able to concentrate better and turn out work faster and/or reduce errors), that will help make your case.