Salary sacrifice

Hamalot

Hi moneysavers

I am used to using salary sacrifice schemes at work. My employer offers salary sacrifice for pension and childcare, and has in the past offered computers and bikes through salary sacrifice. My son is about to start school so I'll be drastcly reducing my use of the childcare vouchers. I'm looking for something else to fill that tax void.

I want to lobby my employer to offer other salary sacrifice schemes and so I've spent a fair bit of time on Google trying to find out what can and can't be done as a salary sacrifice with no joy. I've found other examples such as buying or leasing a new car, mobile phones and lunch vouchers but not a definitive list. I'd say the HMRC Web site is so vague on the issue it leads me to belive that your employer can pay you with anything non monetary and you're not liable for tax.

If anyone can give me a clear answer it'll be you clever lot. Any payroll/HR/tax experts out there who can help?

Thanks

Savvy_Sue

The other thing I can confirm is generally OK is paying for a course of study. We've had someone do a Masters in a subject relevant to our work and salary sacrifice the fees.

pjread

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

The other thing I can confirm is generally OK is paying for a course of study. We've had someone do a Masters in a subject relevant to our work and salary sacrifice the fees.

Hmm, any reference here? If there's potential to effectively pay OU etc fee's tax-free I'm sure there are at least a few dozen of us that'd be very interested...

Hamalot

I've certainly seen work related training during my searches. But again no specifics I'm afraid.

pjread

Ah ok, no I was looking for completely not work related academic courses, and something I could shove under my employers nose to prove it was legit (I'm sure they'd be up for the NI saving...)

zygurat789

pjread wrote: »

Ah ok, no I was looking for completely not work related academic courses, and something I could shove under my employers nose to prove it was legit (I'm sure they'd be up for the NI saving...)

The point about salary sacrifice is that the employer pays for it instead of salary, salary is a tax deductible expense. So, to be fair to the employer, every item for which a salry is sacrificed should be tax deductible and not liable to be included on a P11D.
This would include staff training costs and child care vouchers but if it were for a holiday for the employee then it should go on a P11D.

smifffy1989

Surely you can up the amount you put into your pension?

Savvy_Sue

pjread wrote: »

Hmm, any reference here? If there's potential to effectively pay OU etc fee's tax-free I'm sure there are at least a few dozen of us that'd be very interested...

Sorry, can't find one quickly. It was definitely work related, and there are quite a lot of examples on the HMRC site.

pjread wrote: »

Ah ok, no I was looking for completely not work related academic courses, and something I could shove under my employers nose to prove it was legit (I'm sure they'd be up for the NI saving...)

I hope you're up for the reduced salary on which any redundancy payments would be calculated, should that situation arise.

pjread

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I hope you're up for the reduced salary on which any redundancy payments would be calculated, should that situation arise.

Statutory redundancy pay is capped quite low anyway, 464/wk.

Anyone with something better contractually probably has a level of protection too (e.g. based on 'notional' salary being the pre-sacrifice level is common from what I've seen, for calculating redundancy, overtime pay, pay rises etc)

Hamalot

smifffy1989 wrote: »

Surely you can up the amount you put into your pension?

I can but with any AVCs not being matched by my employer and my pension currently returning 0.06% it doesn't seem like the best use of my money.

I've looked into leasing a car through salary sacrifice but it seems that becomes a company car and i need to pay p11d tax on it so cancels out the benefit of salary sacrifice.