Tax Saver Ticket - re-activated without my knowledge

AmyM91

Hi,
I have a tax saver bus ticket for my commute to work. This comes out of my salary every month.

However, I suspended this at the end of march due to the lockdown. I have not re-activated it as I am still working remotely. The bus company themselves have no issue with suspending the ticket, they just said to give 72 hours notice when re-activating it.

I open my payslip this morning and find that my tax saver bus ticket has been re-activated without my knowledge. I emailed payroll, to ask why it had been started again. They told me to get in contact with the bus company as they thought they had re-activated the tickets.

So I emailed the company and cc'd payroll in. Immediately I got a replay from payroll,
"I started it again on your Pay.It wont really affect the end result for your ticket. You will have more months at the end that you wont be paying for."

How can they re-activate this without notifying me first?

Also, I am currently on the top up payment so the ticket is no longer coming out of my gross pay but my take home. It is also a service i do not need at the moment.

billyhead

AmyM91 wrote: »

Hi,
I have a tax saver bus ticket for my commute to work. This comes out of my salary every month.

However, I suspended this at the end of march due to the lockdown. I have not re-activated it as I am still working remotely. The bus company themselves have no issue with suspending the ticket, they just said to give 72 hours notice when re-activating it.

I open my payslip this morning and find that my tax saver bus ticket has been re-activated without my knowledge. I emailed payroll, to ask why it had been started again. They told me to get in contact with the bus company as they thought they had re-activated the tickets.

So I emailed the company and cc'd payroll in. Immediately I got a replay from payroll,
"I started it again on your Pay.It wont really affect the end result for your ticket. You will have more months at the end that you wont be paying for."

How can they re-activate this without notifying me first?

Also, I am currently on the top up payment so the ticket is no longer coming out of my gross pay but my take home. It is also a service i do not need at the moment.

Arent annual tax saver scheme holders to get extra months added on for not commuting during lockdown. They shouldn't be deducting salary from holders.

Mrs OBumble

Is your ticket annual or monthly?

AmyM91

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Is your ticket annual or monthly?

it is an annual ticket that comes out from my salary monthly

AmyM91

billyhead wrote: »

Arent annual tax saver scheme holders to get extra months added on for not commuting during lockdown. They shouldn't be deducting salary from holders.

I never heard - i just never give the go ahead to re-activate it yet. So now it is coming out of the take home pay.

cdeb

Have you formally cancelled your ticket?

It sounds like you haven't, in which case it may be that your employer has restarted the deductions to recoup the money they're out of pocket at the moment.

Your employer has paid for the ticket in full. I don't know how large your company is, but say they've 50 employees on Taxsaver and each owes an average of E600 at any given time, that means the company is owed E30k. They may want to reduce that.

That's reasonable - though they should have told you beforehand really.

If that is what happened of course.

silent_spark

The deduction from your pay and the activation of the ticket itself are separate things. Check in with the bus company to confirm if the ticket has actually been reactivated. If not, forward this confirmation to payroll and request they reverse the deduction in the next pay run.

AmyM91

**update**

From the last post, it was explained that payroll had started the deductions again without letting me know. I asked them why and if it could be rectified. I heard nothing, so I followed up today. Payroll said there was no update and had I heard back from the bus company. (No idea why? When I was waiting on answers from them on the situation).

I rang the bus company, they said that they are not re-activating tickets unless told to by the ticket holder or the company and they have no control over payroll that it would the company. So I got back and told payroll and there was some more back and forth with no answers.

I then received an email from some one in the finance department.
'You have an annual ticket that was paid in full by company in October and needs to be repaid in 12 months regardless of the circumstances. Your deductions shouldn’t have been suspended by us in the first place. If you have an issue with this you need to contact bus company and ask them to refund company in full for the 7 months you are not using now. You will then when you return to work need to get a new one but we will only allow this to be monthly ticket going forward for you.

So under the current annual ticket you have two options I would think

· Continue to pay the balance between now and October for the full remaining amount bus company will I would understand once you start commuting again extend your tickets by the months you haven’t travelled IE 7 months. That will mean you will have an extended time that you will travel with your current annual pass and not be paying deductions. When your extended period is used up you can then get the new annual ticket when due.

· Contact bus company and ask them to cancel your ticket from April and to refund company for 7/12 of the annual invoice amount, we will need them to complete a bank transfer for this amount. You will then need to contact bus company when you are returning to work full time or when you feel you will start to justify using your pass on the bus, but as part of this you will no longer be supported by company for an annual ticket you will only be allowed to get monthly tickets."

I have had 3 tax saver tickets and this was never explained that the amount would have to be paid regardless of the circumstances. And this was also not highlighted when I suspended my bus ticket with payroll at the end of March. If it had I would of cancelled the ticket back at the end of march. I assumed with the lockdown that the ticket would be frozen and payments would resume when you re-activated the ticket, that there would be a bit of understanding.

I understand now that the bus ticket is paid upfront and they are out money, but not having consideration for their own staff who are on the top up pay and penalising them due to the current pandemic by not allowing them to receive an annual ticket again.

Also, not making the staff aware that there would be a deduction coming back out and trying to place the blame on the bus company, I feel is out of line. I basically had to play Columbo to try and get the reasoning behind why this had happened. If I had been giving this information first - that would of been fine. But having to try and figure things out over the last 2 days myself and not getting any answers is very frustrating.

From what I believe, the ticket was not re-activated but the deductions from my salary was.

cdeb

AmyM91 wrote: »

I have had 3 tax saver tickets and this was never explained that the amount would have to be paid regardless of the circumstances. And this was also not highlighted when I suspended my bus ticket with payroll at the end of March.

In fairness, that should have been obvious at the time. If you buy an annual ticket, you have to pay for it.

AmyM91 wrote: »

I understand now that the bus ticket is paid upfront and they are out money, but not having consideration for their own staff who are on the top up pay and penalising them due to the current pandemic by not allowing them to receive an annual ticket again.

Yeah, there seems to be no reason why they would stop you ordering an annual ticket. The way it's written in your post almost sounds like this is a rule only for you. I would (politely) ask the reason for that. It makes no sense.

Is the bus company Dublin Bus/Bus Éireann? If it is, then your employer will have to cancel (if that's what you want to do) because the cancellation form asks for the invoice number and the customer number, and you won't have either.

It is correct that, if the ticket extension comes through (and details are yet TBC on how that'll work) that you will have use of a ticket in the future and no payslip deduction. It'll all balance out in the end.

billyhead

cdeb wrote: »

In fairness, that should have been obvious at the time. If you buy an annual ticket, you have to pay for it.


Yeah, there seems to be no reason why they would stop you ordering an annual ticket. The way it's written in your post almost sounds like this is a rule only for you. I would (politely) ask the reason for that. It makes no sense.

Is the bus company Dublin Bus/Bus Éireann? If it is, then your employer will have to cancel (if that's what you want to do) because the cancellation form asks for the invoice number and the customer number, and you won't have either.

It is correct that, if the ticket extension comes through (and details are yet TBC on how that'll work) that you will have use of a ticket in the future and no payslip deduction. It'll all balance out in the end.

The NTA are taking their time on issuing advice of the extension of tickets. Some annual tickets would have expired on July 1st.

cdeb

They are - and it's a very tough one for them to work out in fairness.

You would imagine that while Phase 4 is not yet rolled out, then ticket extensions would apply (if you haven't been using it). Beyond that, maybe they might take the view that it's now your own choice not to use your ticket, so no extension would apply after that.

I don't envy them working out the details tbh - though it is a bit frustrating that it's been silence for the past two months.

AmyM91

cdeb wrote: »

In fairness, that should have been obvious at the time. If you buy an annual ticket, you have to pay for it.


Yeah, there seems to be no reason why they would stop you ordering an annual ticket. The way it's written in your post almost sounds like this is a rule only for you. I would (politely) ask the reason for that. It makes no sense.

Is the bus company Dublin Bus/Bus Éireann? If it is, then your employer will have to cancel (if that's what you want to do) because the cancellation form asks for the invoice number and the customer number, and you won't have either.

It is correct that, if the ticket extension comes through (and details are yet TBC on how that'll work) that you will have use of a ticket in the future and no payslip deduction. It'll all balance out in the end.

I'm aware you have to pay for the annual ticket, in normal circumstances that would be fine. Just thought there would be a bit of understanding during this current time.

The bus is a private company as I commute from outside of Dublin to get into the city. I am in the process of cancelling the ticket. The company have put the onus on me to do this.

I have heard nothing about a ticket extension.

cdeb

I'm not sure what you mean by "a bit of understanding" though? The bus company isn't a charity in the end of the day. It's a business where everyone is potentially in danger of losing their jobs over the current crisis. They deserve a bit of understanding too.

HR have advised that you contact the bus company about cancelling the ticket from 1st April (which is quite a fair offer in the circumstances) Arranging this seems the best thing to do.

AmyM91

cdeb wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean by "a bit of understanding" though? The bus company isn't a charity in the end of the day. It's a business where everyone is potentially in danger of losing their jobs over the current crisis. They deserve a bit of understanding too.

HR have advised that you contact the bus company about cancelling the ticket from 1st April (which is quite a fair offer in the circumstances) Arranging this seems the best thing to do.

Yeah I am in the process of cancelling.

By saying a bit of understanding, I meant in general during this time that the majority of people are on a top and restarting payments without notice is a big chunk of income that you relying on.

cdeb

I agree that this seems to have been badly dealt with by your employer (not the bus company though) - purely in terms of communication though. And obviously not allowing you apply for an annual ticket (which makes no sense)

I think they're right that they shouldn't have stopped the deductions in the first place to be honest; I've highlighted how easily a company could be owed tens of thousands under the Taxsaver scheme. I'm sure there's many companies who can ill afford to advance tens of thousands to their employees at the current time. They may even be concerned that there could be a tax exposure if they were seen to be giving staff what would effectively amount to an interest-free loan.

Yes, it's an unfortunate position, but I think it needs understanding from employees' sides as well that the situation is what it is, and concessions are going to have to be made.

AmyM91

cdeb wrote: »

I agree that this seems to have been badly dealt with by your employer (not the bus company though) - purely in terms of communication though. And obviously not allowing you apply for an annual ticket (which makes no sense)

I think they're right that they shouldn't have stopped the deductions in the first place to be honest; I've highlighted how easily a company could be owed tens of thousands under the Taxsaver scheme. I'm sure there's many companies who can ill afford to advance tens of thousands to their employees at the current time. They may even be concerned that there could be a tax exposure if they were seen to be giving staff what would effectively amount to an interest-free loan.

Yes, it's an unfortunate position, but I think it needs understanding from employees' sides as well that the situation is what it is, and concessions are going to have to be made.

Yeah I totally agree.

If back in march when I did suspend they came back and said we can't, your 2 options are to cancel or pay etc and explained, then that would of been perfect. its just like you said the way it was handled.

cdeb

Even then, they could change their policy when they realise how long covid is going to be around for - but they should let you know in advance of restarting deductions from your payslip for sure. Even if they're not giving you a choice in the matter, a heads-up would be best practice.