My Bundle LETS CONNECT **WARNING**

[miles_peters]

just a friendly warning to anyone thinking of getting something expensive through the LETSCONNECT scheme. Just because you're paying each week for something like a laptop for 24 months. At the end of that 24 month period you still will NOT own it.

In order to own it outright you will have to pay a TAX fee which on something expensive wont be a small tax fee. Paying this tax fee will also make the original savings that you think you are getting almost zero

If you choose not to pay the tax fee you will have to return the laptop in the condition it was delivered to you in. This will of course leave you with no laptop and 24 months of payments for nothing.

I'm just making my fellow hardworking RM colleagues aware so they don't fall into this trap.

[worktotime]

yer , just had the letter about the mobile phone I got from them , I'm not happy and I wont be using the shite again.

[Alexei]

Yes, always read the small print

[worktotime]

what that it was tax free ? and that was your saving , oh well it wont happen again.

[Creditshampoo]

How much we talking?
Not like the cycle 2 work scheme where you pay £1 at the end?

[ewancurze]

It would have been OK but the Government changed the rules on these "Perks" soon after this particular scheme started.....and ,of course,just after I got my phone from it.

[fishtank]

This was the government's idea of going after tax avoidance. Having your company based in Luxembourg is fine, hiding your bonuses on an offshore tax haven is fine but paying £600 for a £300 phone through a salary sacrifice scheme is a perk and the full weight of HMRC should be directed against you.

It's much easier to catch 1000 minnows than it is to catch 1 shark.

[Tman]

It's not that at all.
It's not "tax avoidance" any more than mortgage tax relief was, but it's still morally wrong.
The item deduction is taken off of the gross pay, and before the tax is calculated.
Why should the rest of us have to pay more tax just because someone chooses to buy a phone, laptop or some other "essential item" in this way?

[pinstripe]

Why should the rest of us have to pay more tax just because someone chooses to buy a phone, laptop or some other "essential item" in this way?

But you are not paying any more in tax.

Yes the total collected will be less, but you personally are not paying any more.

[fishtank]

It's not "tax avoidance" any more than mortgage tax relief was, but it's still morally wrong.

You do realise that our pension uses exactly the same HMRC rules to limit our tax and NI exposure....
Still morally wrong?

[Tman]

You see phones, cars and laptops as necessities, rather like pension provision, then?
Strange, most seem to see it as little more than an easy, but expensive, way to buy something using weekly payments.

[fishtank]

You see phones, cars and laptops as necessities, rather like pension provision, then?
Strange, most seem to see it as little more than an easy, but expensive, way to buy something using weekly payments.

So it's moral "wrongness" depends on whether you define it as necessary?
What if you spend your pension on phones, cars and laptops?

It's either morally wrong to make deductions before tax and NI or it isn't, necessity or frivolity.

[Carryoncas]

I can’t even see the option for the technology bundles. Is it not available to everyone?

[Creditshampoo]

How much are we talking

[Tman]

It's either morally wrong to make deductions before tax and NI or it isn't, necessity or frivolity.

It isn't a yes/no situation; to say that pension payments are no different to buying a new phone through wages is more sophism than reasoned debate.