Fleet Alliance, have launched a new salary sacrifice car scheme to provide wider car choice for employees as part of their benefits package and to help companies tackle their grey fleet issues by providing access to new, more environmentally friendly cars.  

“We felt that a salary sacrifice scheme was an essential part of our client offering and so have moved to launch this new online service for new and existing customers,” said managing director Martin Brown.

“We feel it will have particular appeal for companies that, as part of their employee benefits scheme, want to provide the choice of a car to a wider proportion of their employees than would normally qualify to receive a company car through their job grade.

“It will also appeal to those companies that have a large number of grey fleet cars, created through the provision of cash for car allowances, as it will help tackle duty of care issues,” he said.

The Fleet Alliance salary sacrifice car scheme promotes low emitting, less polluting vehicles, typically of 140g/km or less, as these are also the most tax-efficient.

As a result, it allows companies to tackle grey fleet issues by providing access for staff, who would typically drive older, more polluting, and less well maintained cars on company business, either funded by themselves or by company cash allowances, to brand new, more environmentally friendly vehicles. To meet duty of care considerations the scheme also includes driver licence checking as part of the offering.

The scheme permits an employee to surrender part of their salary for a non-cash benefit. Because the cost of the benefit is deducted from the employee's gross salary, there are savings in income tax and National Insurance contributions.

Employees can decide how much salary they wish to sacrifice and can then view the choice of vehicles available in the Fleet Alliance scheme online with their full specifications, tax commitments and monthly lease rates, before deciding which one to opt for.

For the employer, the Fleet Alliance scheme brings savings in Class IA National Insurance on the salary being sacrificed, as well as controlling demands for salary increases through offering a better total rewards package and being perceived as a staff retention tool at the same time.

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