Bike to work scheme
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The scheme has been shown to work in multiple cases. I personally know more than few people who never cycled to work and now cycle to work most days - covid messed with a lot of schedules and cycling to the office downstairs isn't really a runner 
I know the scheme in my current place has checks in place around the purchases. It goes as far as checking the quote and the receipt after the fact and both need to have the bike model listed. There was enough hoops that I didn't end up using it.
Schemes like this can be shown to pretty much pay for themselves through other health benefits across the population.
I know the scheme in my current place has checks in place around the purchases. It goes as far as checking the quote and the receipt after the fact and both need to have the bike model listed. There was enough hoops that I didn't end up using it.
Schemes like this can be shown to pretty much pay for themselves through other health benefits across the population.
We could cherry pick figures from that report to show how effective it is too, but really things like this can't be looked at in isolation. Yes the numbers of people cycling has increased, but we'd have seen that without the scheme given other parallel efforts. IMO the scheme has gotten others who wouldn't have cycled to try it, and definitely some to cycle to work.
This would actually be way way way more expensive than the scheme. High end estimates peg the cost of the scheme around 4M a year. Vat from bikes is a lot more than that. High end bikes are really expensive these days and popular with the weekend warrior types.
dereko1969
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You can't remove VAT from bikes due to EU rules, VAT rate could be reduced though.
4m relief relative to the income tax of 20B+ from the same group is trivial. It's simply not worth getting worked up about. There's plenty of other more expensive reliefs even more prone to misuse.
One side benefit of the scheme is finding out if a possible employer has the scheme or not. Why wouldn't any employer not set it up - it's usually out of laziness, if they can't do that then there's a lot more they won't be doing for their employees.
One side benefit of the scheme is finding out if a possible employer has the scheme or not. Why wouldn't any employer not set it up - it's usually out of laziness, if they can't do that then there's a lot more they won't be doing for their employees.
T McGibney
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That sounds unfair. I can't imagine any employer would refuse to accommodate an employee who wishes to avail of it in a bona fide manner. Then again, employers would be well advised not to accommodate suspected abuses of the scheme as there are serious penalties for aiding and abetting tax evasion.
If the lists of participating employers are being mined to draw inferences such as the one you've made here, that is reason enough on its own why they should not be published.
While I never availed of the scheme I did help countless people avail of it from your genuine bike to worker to the parent using the the scheme to buy their kids their first bikes and of all the sales I used to make it was the latter that brought me the biggest joy
While I do agree with you, I would rather see the scheme changed and enlarged to take in all sports and outdoor activities
Where a person could claim back 50% on a single purchase up to the value of €1k once every 3 years through a revenue return
I just feel the knock on effects not just physical and mentally for the end user but for the general industry could be huge
It's up to the company to make the scheme available and some companies refuse to give it to staff (I used work for one - though for all I know maybe they were unique), the main cost to the company is extra paperwork for HR - since only a handful of employees would use it each year HR can find it hard to bother.
I'd not expect anyone to mine for that sort of information, they'll mention perks during the interview (that's what the perks are there for), also you might know people who work or have worked there.
T McGibney
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You're assuming every employer is big enough to have a HR unit.
Fair enough. But it's not a perk as such.
I think the employers are not party to any hooky goings on here. I was asked to sign to say you are using the bike for work and produce a written quote and that the quote given is for your bike. They can't be really blamed if the employee and the bike shop owner are in cahoots and that the order is going to be differant.
Looking at one if these Giant ebikes , I'm a LTD company director of a 3 person company including me as an employee/director. What does my company have to do to buy this bike for me? It's value is well above the 1500 figure the revenue mention. Does the company buy it outright, where does the 1500 off come into this transaction? Do I pay back personally to my company per month out of my gross salary or do I treat this as a gift from my company to me for my partial transportation to the workplace? I don't always go to the same workplace and sometimes work at my home office, and sometimes use the car or van to workplaces. Just depends.
Any advice welcome
Any advice welcome