Up to half price bikes courtesy of Gordon Brown.Yes!!

Maisie

In https://www.thisismoney.co.uk. or news@thisismoney.co.uk
there's an article about getting a bike at up to half price
courtesy of Gordon Brown.

Participating employers can give you a voucher for a new bike and the cost is recouped through your wages with no tax and NI to pay on the loan.

It is worth one third tax to basic rate taxpayers and half off for higher rate tax payers.

The bike is intended for use to work to get people out of cars etc. Apparently Gordon Brown introduced the Green Travel Plan in 1997 and it was little publicised (of course!) so the offer has not been taken up to much effect.

Halfords are taking part in the scheme and today in the Daily Mail there's an offer of £10 off if you spend £50 so they might give you that offer too if you get a bike from them. Worth trying.

Happy cycling folks.

cheapaschips_2

i put this on in the tax pages ages ago but got no-where. apparently it can only be done if your employer goes through a facilitation agency. basically you get a company in to manage it. my company do it for home computers which is the other part of gordons great idea. we have a bike user group at work, with thousands of members and we cant seem to make our company buy into it as yet, so theres little chance of joe public getting a sniff, sorry to sound pessimistic...

Maisie

Cheap as chips... Is the computer scheme still running? Someone told me it had finished but I had never seen it advertised anywhere.
What were the details of that?

Tell your local MP that your employers are not taking part in the scheme. He's there to see that the government schemes are used. He probably doesn't know about it himself!

Jazzy_B

Not strictly on topic, but I've just bought a superb Dawes town bike from a local charity shop for £15. It needs nothing replaced on it, and is in good nick. The Dawes I had before cost nearly £300 , and was pinched. Although it was insured I vowed I would never spend as much on a bike again. I'm a happy bunny.

Maisie

That's a great buy Jazzy B. Happy cycling and take care. Maisie

cheapaschips_2

massie
we had an email round at work saying that there was gonig to be a roadshow for the hci home computing initiaitve by nicator and that we had up until end of march to sign up. there were 4 desktops, 4 laptops and a load of peripherals to choose from (all HP) as far as i know its an ongoing tax rule now. so you need to find out if your company is going to do it. it seems that its not something you can take up any time you choose. you have to take up the offer when it's offered. i think it makes it viable to the facilitating company to do it as a one off as they bulk buy from a supplier, and thus negotiate a much better price. i got a top of the range laptop which i'm paying £25 (after tax) a month for 3 years (total £900 after tax) and have a laptop which would have cost me £1300 in john lewis, pc world, dabs. The scheme is meant to be a loan scheme and so at the end of the 3 years you dont actually own it, but allegedly you are offered to buy it a t a reasonable market value which we were told would be about £50. this is to get round the hire purchase laws.
you can look on the nicator website for ideas, but it's down to your company to set this scheme in progress. hope this helps