Expenses and benefits: assets made available to an employee

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1. Overview

As an employer making assets available for use by your employees, you have certain tax, National Insurance and reporting obligations.

What’s included

Assets can include:

  • computers
  • televisions
  • bicycles

Cars, vans and living accommodation are covered by different rules and reported separately.

If you transfer ownership to your employee, see the guide on assets bought, sold or given.

2. What's exempt

You don’t have to report anything to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) or pay National Insurance on the asset if it’s office equipment provided only for business use.

Salary sacrifice arrangements

You do have to report the asset if it’s part of salary sacrifice arrangement.

3. What to report and pay

If the asset isn’t exempt, you must report it to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and may have to pay National Insurance on it.

Assets for business use only

Some expenses relating to assets for business use are covered by exemptions (which have replaced dispensations). This means you won’t have to include them in your end-of-year reports.

If you don’t have an exemption, you must report on form P11D. You don’t have to deduct or pay any tax or National Insurance.

Assets for personal and business use

You must:

4. Work out the value

There are 2 steps to working out how much your asset is worth:

  1. Take the greater of either the asset’s annual value or the rental or hire charges you pay for it.

  2. Add anything else you’ve spent on the asset during the year, eg running costs.

The asset’s annual value is 20% of its market value when you first provided it as an employee benefit.

You should reduce the value proportionately if either of the following applies:

  • you made the asset available to more than one employee during the year
  • you used the asset directly for your business during the year in some other way than making it available to your employee

Salary sacrifice arrangements

If the cost of the asset is less than the amount of salary given up, report the salary amount instead.

These rules don’t apply to arrangements made before 6 April 2017 - check when the rules will change.

5. Technical guidance

The following guide contains more detailed information: