I’m getting a bike on C2W, hopefully. Our finance guy has been away for a few weeks and I’m hoping to get the bike by the weekend before Christmas. It’s been so long since we did a C2W here that he’s lost the information and can’t remember what firm we used.

I remember these firms taking ages to sort stuff out. Also the bike is discounted and the shop add an 11% surcharge to it to cover their C2W costs.

Would I be right in thinking that the C2W scheme folk just take the money from my employer then pay the shop? What’s to stop us just paying with the company card? I suspect the shop would then knock the 11% charge off the top, and the finance guy would be pleased to have £70 or so remain in the company bank account. Do the C2W scheme providers do the tax stuff or are they really just a till with people?

I think the problem is something to do with credit licensing. Unless your company is able to offer credit they need a company like Cyclescheme to handle it and companies like Cyclescheme need to take a cut to make money.

and your company won’t much care. The more you salary sacrifice the more NI they save.

It depends how much you want to spend; I’m not that up-to-date on the scheme, but it used to be that anything under £1000 was covered by a Consumer Credit Licence for the scheme, so you don’t need to go through a middle man – I set up a scheme for one company where they did exactly as you suggest and the employee signed the agreement we put together, then went to the bike shop with a company credit card and the monthly payments came off his salary.

A quick Google suggests that the £1k limit is still in place; the most recent official (ie not produced by scheme providers!) documents are dated 2011, and mention the group CCL as still being valid up to that limit.

I set up a cycle to work scheme in my previous job.

There is nothing stopping you doing it yourself. If you have a word with your LBS you may even be able to get a discount as to them it is just a cash sale without the need to pay the middle man’s fees.

You do need a consumer credit licence, but there is one on the HMRC website that you can download for free. It is just a .pdf. There are guidelines on HRMC about how to calculate the payments and the final value too.

Note: This was four years ago, so things may have changed.

You will need to get some text for a hire agreement. Go to a middle man’s website and pinch it, then make the appropriate alterations.

Dead easy to set up. If you get your info together and present it in a way that the finance guy will have little to do other than benefit from an NI saving you are laughing.

Our Cycle to Work scheme is organised entirely between my employer and the bike shop across the road from our head office (Edinburgh Cycle Co-op). Added bonus of being able to get discounted last season bikes. Don’t know all the ins and outs, but they do an order once per year, get all the details together and BACS the money across for the whole lot straight to the bike shop

Hi Munrobiker,

My company, Cycle Solutions, runs the scheme directly for many employers and we will be happy to set this up. We have a large online selection of bikes and can administer the scheme fully electronically through our website, enabling your employer to operate the benefit with very little work.

We simply make our money by supplying the bikes directly, so there are no fees and added charges to pay the ‘middlemen’.

Feel free to get in touch at info@cyclesolutions.co.uk or 0330 100 2480 if you would like us to get things in motion.

Best wishes,

Steve

Four members of staff here, two of us bought our bikes with the company CC and the cost was deducted from our salaries over the year. Simple.
Season ticket loan would operate the same.

Awaits HMRC knock on the door!

Mmmkay, I have now done some research as our finance director still hasn’t sorted this and it turns out you no longer need a consumer credit licence. When the office of fair trading was disbanded the FCA took over and according to their website the requirement for a licence has been waived for c2w and so you can just buy a bike on work’s card and have done with it.

Excellent!

Cycle to Work schemes allow employers to loan bicycle and bicycle safety equipment to employees free of any income tax liability.

The OFT issued a group licence to cover consumer hire agreements entered into by employers participating in the Cycle to Work schemes.

Under the new regime, Cycle to Work schemes will be exempt (for a bicycle or cyclist’s safety equipment up to the value of £1,000) so an employer will not need to be authorised for the consumer hire activity just because it runs such a scheme.

If an employer needs, however, to be authorised for a different activity, it will not be able to rely on this exemption (unless those other activities are credit activities and it has an interim permission for them).

http://www.fca.org.uk/firms/firm-types/consumer-credit/regulation/scope-regimes

I work for a small company; I bought the bike with my CC. I had bike shop generate a VAT invoice made out to my company for £1,000 who then repaid me the £1000. I then repaid the £1,000 to my company minus VAT, monthly, taken directly at PAYE. At the end of the 12 annual repayments the company invoiced me for the bike at a market value and ownership passed to me. At the time £1000 was the max allowed without the CCL. If I do it again, I’ll put more than £1k on the C2W scheme.

My understanding has always been, that if the employer is a licenced credit broker the £1000 limit does not apply.