Free meals for NHS hospital employees?

My sister works in a hospital who treats mental health and learning disability people. They currently receive a free meal, which is taken with the patients and it helps the patients to integrate and socialise with people. The hospital is now saying that staff can't get free meals as it is a benefit in kind, and they either want to stop the staff getting them, or making them pay. Is there a special concession for health workers to allow free meals to be given. The staff are still effectively working when they have their meal. Would be grateful for any help or information. Browsing around the HMRC website is a nightmare.

Reply to
Tom Bradbury
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I'm not aware that a 'working lunch' - when you are *really* working, as in this case - is a benefit in kind. This is something which needs to be taken up by your sister's trade union if she has one. My response, in her position, would be that I would go out for lunch - or at least eat it in a peaceful environment away from the patients - if I had to pay for it.

Reply to
Roger Mills

easiest way round the "benefit in kind rule" is to do what welcome break do with coach drivers, just charge them 1p for the meal so then it is paid for and apparently has no tax implications, it would be a sad person who objected to paying this amount to avoid income tax on the so called free meal

Reply to
Alan

It most certainly does have a tax implication. This is an inducement. The cost of the meal, less 1p, should be declared. There is also the moral question of this, both for the drivers and for Welcome Break.

Reply to
Stickems.

Welcome break do not employ the coach drivers so it cannot be said they are being paid a "Benefit in kind" as part of their remuneration.

In reality they are being paid a few pounds commission as freelancers for providing Welcome Break with a coachload of paying customers.

HMRC would not be fazed by a 1p charge for a 5 quid meal should they choose to address the issue.

If nothing else, HMRC are losing 74.5p in VAT on every (5 quid) meal that is charged out at a non commercial rate, that time may not be very long in the coming.

DG

Reply to
Derek Geldard

Subsidized lunches (even if subsidized down to zero) are not a BiK if the perk is available to all employees. But if not available to all employees, then it is taxable.

Whether this rule is applied per company or per site, I don't know.

tim

Reply to
tim (not at home)

"tim (not at home)" wrote

If it is applied "per company", then there is a very easy way to get around it ... simply set up a separate company to employ just those employees that it is desired to give subsidised/free meals to. All other employees would be employed by the main company.

On the other hand, if it is applied "per site", then this would have ramifications on multiple labour sources working on the same site : eg true "employees" and external "contractors"... [You might want to give true employees free meals, but not to outsourcers working at your site for a while.]

I wonder which it is?

Reply to
Tim

It could be both - per company, per site! I think that's the most likely from my own experience, although I've been retired for a few years now, so things may have changed.

I worked at a large manufacturing site which had a subsidised canteen. Then my company moved a group of us into a city centre office block - shared by a number of companies - which had no canteen. In order to perpetuate the subsidy, the company set up a deal with a restaurant under which we paid a reduced price for meals, and the restaurant invoiced the company for the difference. That way, it wasn't taxable. If the company had given us cash (or probably luncheon vouchers) it would have been. This deal applied only to the employees of my company in that office block - not all the other companies. It also didn't apply in the same form to employees of my company based at other sites. Hence per company, per site.

Reply to
Roger Mills

"Roger Mills" wrote

In that case, the "workaround" suggested earlier of setting up a new company *will* work!

"Roger Mills" wrote

I had wondered if that were the case. So, just a bit of paperwork setting up a new company for a specific group of employees, will avoid the BIK tax!

Reply to
Tim

Possibly, but it may not be that trivial - because the new company will presumably need to be established as a legal entity, and the contracts of employment etc. will have to be changed.

Reply to
Roger Mills

"Roger Mills" wrote

Yep, that's what I meant by "just a bit of paperwork". Big companies do that sort of thing every day...

Reply to
Tim

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