So, I'm lucky enough to work for a small company and my boss is a keen roadie so He's happy for the company to buy a bike and 'rent' it back to me under the guise of a C2W scheme, just one operated by our accountant... great!
So I've been looking at replacing my older roadie-commuter with something a little nicer but since the VAT increase etc I couldn't seem to find the bike I wanted for <£1000. Ideally I was after a Planet X or Ribble (Ribble still sub £1k but poorer groupset).
Aftaer a conversation with our accountant he agreed that I could build a bike as long as the sum of all the components was <£1000... winner!
Not sure if anyone else has done this or knew they could but I thought I'd share my personal triumph with you all.
I've just taken receipt of the wheels, finishing kit, pedals, bar tape and 105 groupset from merlin and am now waiting for the Planet X frame & fork, saddles and a few other bits. The whole build will cost £999.60
Winner! will post some pics when its built up... hopefully by monday!
Aye - there's no issues about specifying your own build, as long as the total bike costs less than the voucher value. It has to be said that the bike manufacturers are [i]usually[/i] better at getting a decent build for that than some individual.
sum people can even spell!!! 😡 😀
I know what you mean but I just couldn't get it to work. Granted If I had done it a few months ago I could have got the Planet X with Sram Rival but wasn't quick enough and just faffed around but I think it will be a pretty nice build. All the finishing Kit that I got is the same as on the higher end planet x and I have some nice touches, granetd mostly cosmetic but things like the saddle upgrade make it a more personal build.
I also made use of merlin's accumulator discount, as I spent over £250 I got 10% off the total, so really I'd say the buld is more on the £1100 side of things. SOme bargain buying but as I said I think it will be pretty nice when finished.
Just wanted to let people know they could do this, I was lucky that I was able to by the components from multiple companies as long as all the invoices were to the company and noty to me
Have I made a mistake cynic-al?
Pay the difference in cash?
Nope tgs, but what about druid????
????
Four question marks?
Pedantry fail.
unfortunately I don't have the spare cash to give the shop. Hence I needed the scheme and to use my boss' credit card. either way, I'm happy
HOw many should I be using Turdinalis?
1 is quite sufficient.
Yep, I did my bike this way. I think I got the value of the receipts to £999.70 😀
If you've got a friendly company, then you can maximise savings by having the company pass on the employers' NI savings to you, and by making the final value payment much less than fair market value, and just paying the tax on the difference. I've got a spreadsheet that calculates figures that make it exactly cash neutral to the company overall (actually, if your company is profitable, they still benefit as the bike is business expenditure which can be set against taxable profit). Email me if you want a copy of the spreadsheet.
If you've got a [i]really[/i] friendly company, it's worth bearing in mind that there's no requirement for the company to cover its costs. In fact, I think that if they just loan the bike to you for free, rather than hiring it, the £1k limit disappears 😀
I'm interested that you bought stuff from Merlin. The groupset for my bike came from Merlin and they wouldn't give me a proper VAT receipt.
PDW - I ordered it on my bosses company credit card and had them make the invoice out to my company, that said I'll check the invoice for VAT and just hand it over to the accountant. My bosses are pretty cool about this stuff.
Could you email me the spreadsheet, I'd be interested to take a look.
topgunsteve(at)hotmail.com
Cheers