Your blog category
Workplace benefits are often sold with a single eye-catching number: save this much tax, pay this much less each month, or get this much extra in your pension. Headline savings are useful, but they rarely tell the whole story. Two benefits that look similar on paper can be very different in real life, once you…
Salary sacrifice sounds simple: you agree to give up part of your gross salary, and your employer provides something else instead, such as extra pension contributions, a cycle, or a car. Because the swap usually lowers your taxable pay, it can also lower National Insurance contributions for you and your employer. That is where the…
If you are in a salary sacrifice arrangement and thinking about a new job, it is natural to wonder what happens next. Does the arrangement simply stop? Do you owe anything? Can you take it with you? The short answer is that most salary sacrifice arrangements are tied to your employment, so changing jobs usually…
An electric car salary sacrifice scheme lets you give up part of your gross salary in exchange for a leased electric car, usually with insurance, servicing and maintenance bundled in. For many UK employees, it sounds like a simple way to drive a new electric car without a large deposit. It can be good value,…
Salary sacrifice can be a useful workplace benefit, but it comes with an important limit. If you give up part of your pay in exchange for something else, your remaining cash pay must still meet the National Minimum Wage rules. This guide explains how the two fit together, and what to check before you join…
Your payslip can look confusing at first. Numbers appear in several columns, abbreviations pop up without explanation, and the amount that reaches your bank account is often quite different from the salary you were offered. That is normal. Once you know what each section means, a payslip becomes a useful monthly check rather than a…
A salary sacrifice scheme can be a useful way to build up your pension, but it changes your contractual salary, so it is worth asking a few clear questions before you sign anything. You do not need to be a pensions expert — just straight answers about your pay, your pension, and what happens if…
If you have ever read a workplace pension letter and felt lost in the jargon, you are not alone. Salary sacrifice sounds complicated, but the basic idea is fairly simple: you agree to give up part of your salary, and your employer pays that amount into your pension instead. Because the money goes straight into…
Open a UK payslip and you may see several lines that reduce your pay before it reaches your bank account. Two of the most confusing are salary sacrifice and salary deduction. They sound similar, and both mean less cash in hand, but they work in very different ways, and the difference matters for tax and…
If you have spotted the phrase “salary sacrifice” in your employer’s benefits booklet, you may have wondered whether it means giving up pay for nothing in return. It does not. In simple terms, salary sacrifice is an agreement between you and your employer to exchange part of your cash salary for a non-cash benefit, such…