>>In MySQL Workbench I can choose the local Server, or a web server. If I choose the local version of course it will use the local date. There's no other option.
>>I would expect to expect the web server version to use the remote date.
>
>That might be odd. A remote serve in a different time zone could be a day wrong ...

Exactly
That's why you do this:

//set the timezone to Eastern time
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');