Ian Smith
February 6th 09, 10:00 PM
On Fri, 6 Feb, Michael > wrote:
> I've been exploring the possibility of buying a bike through the
> government's Green Transport Plan (see Evans Cycles' Ride2Work scheme
> http://www.evanscycles.com/ride2work ). I contacted the HR of my employer
> (a university) who after a couple of exchanges said:
>
> > HR has had the issue of salary sacrifice arrangements for the
> > acquisition of cycles under review for some time and have outline
> > agreement with a supplier. They can be administratively complex as
> > you indicate but the real concern is approval from HMRC. To be able
> > to run these you need to make the arrangement available to all staff,
> > otherwise the tax and NI free status of the scheme falls and everyone
> > loses out. We do have categories of employees who would potentially
> > be unable to take part. As the rules currently stand we cannot
> > restrict the offer of such a scheme to limited groups whilst retaining
> > tax free status. A working group between HMRC, the CBI and other large
> > employer groups is currently deliberating this issue and they have no
> > date for resolution that we are currently aware of.
> >
> > Operators of schemes are downplaying this issue for their own
> > commercial reasons!
>
> I would think that by 'categories of employees who would potentially be
> unable to take part' they are referring to employees with certain
> disabilities. If this is true, I don't see how any employers other than
> the really small ones can possibly take advantage of the GTP.
On which basis alone it sounds like baloney.
The other thing that indicates that they don't know what they are
talking about is the implication that you need an operator for the
scheme - you don't.
If there are rules internal to your employer that say they will not
offer salary sacrifice schemes to people until they've been employed
three years, or reached pay grade 14b or something else, then no, they
can't offer the cycle to work scheme to anyone. Otherwise, I think
they think you'll be put off if the huff and puff a bit and mention
important sounding people like the CBI.
Ask them what category of employee they cannot offer it to, and why
they cannot offer it to that category of employee.
regards, Ian SMith
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> I've been exploring the possibility of buying a bike through the
> government's Green Transport Plan (see Evans Cycles' Ride2Work scheme
> http://www.evanscycles.com/ride2work ). I contacted the HR of my employer
> (a university) who after a couple of exchanges said:
>
> > HR has had the issue of salary sacrifice arrangements for the
> > acquisition of cycles under review for some time and have outline
> > agreement with a supplier. They can be administratively complex as
> > you indicate but the real concern is approval from HMRC. To be able
> > to run these you need to make the arrangement available to all staff,
> > otherwise the tax and NI free status of the scheme falls and everyone
> > loses out. We do have categories of employees who would potentially
> > be unable to take part. As the rules currently stand we cannot
> > restrict the offer of such a scheme to limited groups whilst retaining
> > tax free status. A working group between HMRC, the CBI and other large
> > employer groups is currently deliberating this issue and they have no
> > date for resolution that we are currently aware of.
> >
> > Operators of schemes are downplaying this issue for their own
> > commercial reasons!
>
> I would think that by 'categories of employees who would potentially be
> unable to take part' they are referring to employees with certain
> disabilities. If this is true, I don't see how any employers other than
> the really small ones can possibly take advantage of the GTP.
On which basis alone it sounds like baloney.
The other thing that indicates that they don't know what they are
talking about is the implication that you need an operator for the
scheme - you don't.
If there are rules internal to your employer that say they will not
offer salary sacrifice schemes to people until they've been employed
three years, or reached pay grade 14b or something else, then no, they
can't offer the cycle to work scheme to anyone. Otherwise, I think
they think you'll be put off if the huff and puff a bit and mention
important sounding people like the CBI.
Ask them what category of employee they cannot offer it to, and why
they cannot offer it to that category of employee.
regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|