What's the point of rail season tickets?

WillyNelson · 8 Aug 2018 at 11:42

skyripper said:
Don't ask me, I didn't write it. I suspect there are thousands of commuters in blissful ignorance that they've underpaid a smidge of tax for the pleasure of going to work! I'm off to cry into my beer

I meant that you'd misunderstood it.

The money used to repay the loan has to have been taxed via income tax & NI, so must be deducted from net pay. The ruling you linked to means that there is no additional taxable benefit arising from loans of under £10k.

skyripper · 8 Aug 2018 at 12:06

Ok, so it's not a SMART benefit, they just can't charge you additional tax for taking a loan from your employer under that amount. Fair enough. If you had a loan over that amount it could be seen as a taxable benefit. Gotcha.

Amp34 · 8 Aug 2018 at 17:52

I used to buy daily/weekly tickets when I commuted in to London for just this reason.

I'm sure it works out cheaper if you don't take annual leave, or work 6 days a week, but otherwise there's no benefit.

Energize · 8 Aug 2018 at 18:06

franneh12 said:
Season ticket does have one plus of renewal discount so helps a little bit.

What's the renewal discount? I've never heard of this before.

Energize · 8 Aug 2018 at 18:09

Qjumper said:
With a season ticket you can still claim for late services / cancelled trains just like anyone else..

Simples..

How exactly does the claim process work, at the train station there are loads of trains heading northbound that I could catch, on occasion there is a large delay on one of the trains I could have caught, is it possible to claim for those even if there are other trains I could have boarded?

b0rn2sk8 · 8 Aug 2018 at 20:53

Energize said:
How exactly does the claim process work, at the train station there are loads of trains heading northbound that I could catch, on occasion there is a large delay on one of the trains I could have caught, is it possible to claim for those even if there are other trains I could have boarded?

No, not really. If say only one of the 4 trains an hour is delayed then you were only delayed about 15 mins and so it meet the criteria for compensation.

Claiming for train journeys that you had no intention of travelling on is a dangerous game (its fraud... prison is a possible outcome).

BigT · 8 Aug 2018 at 21:46

Anytime return for me is £65 and I do 200 days a year in the office so £13K compared to £7150 a year for an annual gold card which makes the season ticket well worth it.

My 0% work loan is definitely deducted post tax/NI as it should for everyone.

Energize · 8 Aug 2018 at 23:14

b0rn2sk8 said:
No, not really. If say only one of the 4 trains an hour is delayed then you were only delayed about 15 mins and so it meet the criteria for compensation.

Claiming for train journeys that you had no intention of travelling on is a dangerous game (its fraud... prison is a possible outcome).

Well the thing is on flexitime I start and leave work at my leisure which is a different time every day usually based on which trains are running so it's one of those situations where my intentions are shaped based on train times and you could basically argue either way for any given train service that I did or did not have an intention of travelling on it.

I mean for example say I plan to get the 16:41 home and it gets delayed so I leave work later accruing 40mins flexi to get the 17:20 instead, did I therefore intend to get the 16:41 or the 17:20?