Returning a cyclescheme bike

phy2sll2

Anyone considered returning their cyclescheme / bike to work / whatever flavour tax-free bike after a year?

Didn't realise how quickly I'd get into riding when I bought my sub £300 hybrid. Now I think I'd like to ditch it and clear the space in my flat so I can buy a nice winter trainer (or put together a SSFG) to ride when I'm not on the racer.

Selling it's not really an option as a) I don't own it, b) to buy it from them would cost more than I could realistically get from selling it (£54? thanks a lot HMRC!) If I pay them £9 I get to hang on to it for the next four(?) years. Doesn't seem like that great a deal if it's just going to be sitting around.

Only thing stopping me is that I don't want to add to a massive pile of environment destroying scrap bikes. Anyone know what cyclescheme do with returned bikes?

pdw

If you really think that your bike will be worth less than the HMRC specified value, then your company can sell to you for less than that, provided you have some evidence to back up your belief. Whether they could be bothered is another matter...

I suspect your best option would be to buy it, break it and ebay the parts.

dhope

I'm sure you could get more than £54 for a 1 year old £250 bike. At the very least you could get £54 so it goes to a good home and doesn't cost you anything. Stick a note up in the classifieds here and see what happens.

phy2sll2

OK, agree with that. That's the way I'll go then.

Clare_M

We sold our old hybrids for over £250 and £300 respectively. They were Giant FCRs. However, Dave had an old Marin MTB and I had a Carrera Vulcan which was heavier than my car. Stuck them on ebay and sold the Marin for about £75 and the Vulcan for £52. We couldn't believe people would pay that much, but bikes on ebay go for silly money! The bloke who bought mine came from Worcester to collect it! Mental.

phy2sll2

Clare_M wrote:

We sold our old hybrids for over £250 and £300 respectively. They were Giant FCRs. However, Dave had an old Marin MTB and I had a Carrera Vulcan which was heavier than my car. Stuck them on ebay and sold the Marin for about £75 and the Vulcan for £52. We couldn't believe people would pay that much, but bikes on ebay go for silly money! The bloke who bought mine came from Worcester to collect it! Mental.

That's encouraging!

thinbo

here is a link to the official HMRC blurb about final payments etc http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim21667a.htm
of note at the bottom is a table of acceptable valuation percentages.

this is the particular paragraph of interest:

If employers chose to use lower values, it would remain open to HMRC to challenge these and the employer or employee (as appropriate) would need to be able to provide evidence in support of these values i.e. to demonstrate that the employee could have realised no more than these sums from sale or disposal of the cycle. We would expect evidence of a lower value to include:
a photograph of the cycle demonstrating its condition along with a description of any important aspects of its condition that are not evident from photographic evidence

if my bike was to develop some areas of damage e.g. bent derailieur hanger, buckled wheel, snapped chain. Could I subtract the cost of repairing them from the FMV or justify a significantly lower final payment without running into problems?

pdw

if my bike was to develop some areas of damage e.g. bent derailieur hanger, buckled wheel, snapped chain. Could I subtract the cost of repairing them from the FMV or justify a significantly lower final payment without running into problems?

Yes, although as described, take photos and document the issues. A quote from a bike shop for the repair would probably help too.

The only issue may be that it is for your company to decide the price that they offer it to you at. You may or may not be able to influence this.

TommyEss

pdw wrote:

The only issue may be that it is for your company to decide the price that they offer it to you at. You may or may not be able to influence this.

Yeah - this can be the biggest headache of all - my company back home played everything absolutely to the letter, but just the basics. They applied the new advice from HMRC re. valuation immediately and post-dated to any scheme that had not yet run, and weren't open to any discussion on things like this.

Thankfully mine came through before the valuation advice, and I sold it for pretty much what it cost me over the year, to cover the cost of my shipping to Australia.

YMMV!