[mjr00]

A worker in country X or country Y are very different for companies' balance sheets. For instance, my company is Canadian, and we are eligible for significant tax credits through SR&ED[0] for software developers. If a software developer moved their permanent residence to outside Canada, even if we could magically pin exchange rates to pay them the CAD equivalent in local currency, it would be a significantly different financial impact on the company as they aren't eligible for that program. I'm not an expert, but I imagine there are many equivalent programs in every country, state, and even municipality.

It works both ways, anyway. If those friends had moved from Thailand to Switzerland, would it be discrimination to pay them more?

[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-...

[supafastcoder]

> A worker in country X or country Y are very different for companies' balance sheets

Yes, but quite often, workers are in the same country (or even same state!) and still get paid differently based on CoL.