Mark said:On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:27:44 +0100, "Nigel Cliffe" <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:Mark said:
Does anyone here have any experience as an _employer_ of any of
the tax free cycle schemes (or has done it all themselves)?
Yes, but not directly - there's an accounts department that does the
money stuff.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:There are two parts to the scheme:
a) buying the bike - trivially easy. Essentially company can write
cheque and let you use the bicycle. There is no more paperwork than
any other company purchase to be shown on the accounts. Most tiny
companies do it this way.
We generally use one of the company credit cards, as it happens -
employee identifies the bike they want to one of the directors, who
buys it on the company plastic.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:b) salary sacrifice - optional and more complicated. This can be
done in house, and for a small company its easy to arrange if both
parties are friendly. The more formal arrangements tend to be done
through an out-sourcing company who administer the entire scheme.
The outsourcer generally make their money by means of rake-back on
the sale of the bicycles.
This has been one of the arguments against it. They don't want to
set up a salary sacrifice for a "trivial amount". Can the
outsourcing companies handle this?
Yes, but you'll (probably) get a less good deal.
Don't they want to retain staff? I haven't actually spoken to our
accounts people, but they certainly don't seem to have had any
difficulty. Admittedly someone needs to make decisions about how the
sacrifice will work (for example, if the company pays into a pension
for you, based on a percentage of your salary, will that be based on
the pre-sacrifice or after sacrifice number?). If management don't
feel up to making decisions like that, I'm not sure it's likely to be
a flourishing company for long.
Do they offer any other salary sacrifice benefits (eg childcare
vouchers)? You could find out what else is available, and point out
that if they work out how to do salary sacrifice it could be applied
to more than just bikes, and might be a well-received staff benefit at
no cost and minimal time investment by the company.
Quoted message said:Another reason cited is that they don't want the admin of buying an
asset.
Eh? What does this company do? Sit around (on the floor, obviously,
as don't want the aggro of buying chairs) talking about what they
could do if they got round to buying a desk, telephone or even a
computer?
regards, Ian SMith
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