This is old news, but.... (bike to work scheme)

For any brummies that havent seen this (pistaboy, spinwellbloke) - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/13/cycle-to-work-scheme-bargain-ends

Under the newly clarified rules, detailed here, I am going to have to pay quite a bit more. And so is anyone else partway through the scheme, as well as anyone who signs up in the future. That's because the killjoys in the tax office have decided that a bike worth more than £500 new will be worth 25% of its original value one year on. So my £700 bike will be worth £175 on its first birthday. Truth be told, it's probably a better reflection of its actual worth, but it's still a whopping £140 more than I was expecting.

however...

according to an article on the industry website, Bikebiz.com, one bike shop selling high-quality Dutch bikes has calculated that a typical customer of his would now make a grand saving of £19 as a result of the regime change.

The CTC has done its own calculations and reckons the changes are nothing like as dramatic. "On a quick calculation we believe that the savings (not including administrative costs to run the scheme) would be 29% for a basic rate taxpayer and 42% for a higher rate taxpayer when buying the bike after a 12-month hire contract. Those are still very good terms," said Chris Peck, the CTC's policy co-ordinator.

I have seen this too Lee. My place has finally signed up to the scheme as well. In the end look at it like this. You will still get a savings on the bike. Maybe not as much as when the scheme was originally put together. But one way of looking at it is a 0% interest £1k loan paid over 12 months out of your wage pre-tax. Still it is not a bad deal overall IMHO

That's sooo rubbish. That means I have a £500 bill I wasn't expecting on the way!

I'm unsure if I'm going to get stiffed at the end of my C2W this year. I'll find out in October. On the plus side, a mate who works in the same building has just completed their C2W term and hasn't been stiffed by our employer (Warwick Uni), so there's hope...

Perhaps it'll still be worth doing for bikes under £500?

This part of the reason I steered clear of the C2W scheme. Your employer decides what the "fair market value" is and there's still no guarantee they'll actually sell you the bike at the end of the rental period. Plus if your company goes bankrupt (quite likely these days) I expect you'd lose the bike and all the money you put towards it.

no longer a problem, apparently

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2010/aug/28/cycle-to-work-scheme

That's something at least. I'm still not going to bother again though. Where I work has a £750 purchase limit so I wouldn't of been able to buy some crazy bike for that. Both bikes I've bought through the scheme have been around £500 (a Trek 7.5 FX and a Charge Plug Freestyler more recently).

A mate of mine is going to try out buying a bike from a shop that does 0% finance, and put a larger deposit down. Less red tape and sodding about I reckon.

Lots of talk about this on the CTC forum. My undertsanding is that you can claim the bike as benefit in kind (at the end of the shceme) and then pay tax on what you should have paid in the handover of the bike; e.g. tax on 25% of the cost of the bike, which is about 5% of the total cost.