Spouse's bike-to-work

eoghanlk

Registered User
Messages
44
My wife and I are jointly assessed for tax purposes with my wife working part time and earning about 20K a year. She is interested in getting a bike and I've suggested using the bike to work scheme. I've done so myself and got roughly 50% relief. How would this operate in her case?
 
It is no different to your own case Eoghan, she can avail of the same scheme and can decide how to spread the payments via her salary (e.g. in one go or over a number of months).
 
Thanks for the reply.
Will the bike end up costing her a lot more or will she get the same tax relief as I did?
 
The way it works is that she pays for the bike out of her gross salary before tax is deducted. So in short, if she receives €400 nett per week and the bike costs €500 and she wants to spread payment over 6 months (25 weeks), she would have €20 per week deducted from her pay each week before tax is calculated. So lets say her gross is €500 per week and €100 is deducted in tax each week (this is not accurate but just to give an indicative idea). Instead now she would have tax calculated on €480 so her nett take home might be more like €390 per week.
 
But she won't avail of the 50% saving as she's not paying tax at the marginal rate ... !?