Subsidised commuting – what are the tax advantages?
For some of your employees a large dent on their earnings will be a result of getting to and from work by transport.
Did you know there’s several ways you can help them and your business by offering a tax efficient perk, as part of their pay package?
1st way, a simple loan – your employees can reduce their public transport costs by purchasing a season ticket.
But, the trouble is these can be expensive and it means them finding money to pay the ticket as a lump sum, resulting in most employees lending money.
As you are probably well aware, any credit card or overdraft will add interest, which in turn will then reduce the season ticket saving.
Our tip, is to avoid interest charges, by lending an employee up to £10,000 interest free.
Now I can see you thinking, why on earth would you possibly do this? Well, to you this is a tax and NI-free perk, but why? You can recoup the loan from their salary.
2nd way, subsidised bus routes.
What if some of your employees face a long walk from the nearest bus stop into the office or factory?
You might be able to make use of a quirky but useful tax break, all you have to do is pay a bus operator to increase the frequency of the service, or add a stop closer to you.
The tax and NI-free benefit to you is that in return for the subsidy, the bus company can offer free, or reduced rate tickets for your staff.
Then, you can recoup some if not all of the cost of subsidising a bus route by having employees give up some of their salary in exchange for the bus season ticket.
Or if the bus subsidy looks too costly, how about joining forces with other business owners near by?
Where none of the above work, how about an alternative tax break.
You could, again with other business owners if necessary, hire/buy a minibus to pick up employees from various points en route to or from work.
To recover some of the costs you could hire out the minibus when it is not being used, such as at the weekends and evenings.
As you would normally expect, your company’s costs associated with any of the above are tax deductible from its business profits.