Advice for unlocking access to electric vehicles (EVs) with salary sacrifice

The growth of salary sacrifice to unlock access to electric vehicles and the way company car benefits are changing will be explored in detail at next week’s Fleet & Mobility Live.

The free-to-attend event, which takes place at the NEC, near Birmingham on Tuesday and Wednesday (October 5 and 6), will feature new Benefits Box seminar content specifically aimed at those in the HR, benefits and rewards industry that are increasingly gaining responsibility for salary sacrifice, affinity schemes and travel.

There will be two focussed and information Benefits Box sessions each day of the show, including a salary sacrifice back to basics presentation repeated on each day by Simon Down and Alex Marks, both associate directors on the car consulting team at Deloitte.

Down and Marks both have specialist knowledge looking at salary sacrifice schemes, including how they have become transformational in opening access to more drivers to make the switch to EV.

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Salary sacrifice had been declining in popularity since 2017 when the Government introduced the optional remuneration arrangements (OpRA) legislation, which effectively removed its tax and NI efficiency as it meant an employee would be taxed on the greater of the value of the benefit or the salary they gave up.

However, an exemption for vehicles with 75g/km of CO2 or less has made salary sacrifice an attractive proposition again for drivers looking to reduce their benefit-in-kind company car tax rates.

Benefits to an employee include saving tax and/or Class 1 (Primary NIC), access to corporate discounts and, in some cases, the ability to unlock additional employer funding.

Employers can save Class 1 (Primary) NIC and reinvest these savings into areas such as employee benefits or green initiatives, while offering salary sacrifice can also improve staff recruitment and retention.

Down said: “We offer it at Deloitte and it's something that we as a firm are actually looking to push in terms to generate some savings for the business.”

Meanwhile John Ambridge, a consultant in Mercer’s Career business specialising in all areas of employee reward will be on hand to offer a holistic overview of the latest thinking, innovations and challenges with benefits in relation to company cars in the UK.

Amanda Bullough, Siemens EMEA benefits lead and a member of the Fleet & Mobility Live Visitor Advisory Board, will also be presenting an in-depth case study that will provide on-the-ground best practice examples on the challenge of balancing benefit and commodity in policy design.

Register now for Fleet & Mobility Live