Allow UK workers to buy monthly or annual rail season tickets through genuine salary sacrifice arrangements, that deliver Income Tax and NI savings for employees, effectively reducing commuting costs and encouraging public transport use.

Commuting costs are a major financial pressure for many UK workers.

Salary sacrifice schemes already exist for pensions, childcare, cycle-to-work schemes and electric vehicles, helping people reduce costs through tax and National Insurance savings. Rail season tickets do not currently offer the same tax and National Insurance savings in practice.

Although employers can provide season tickets, HMRC rules treat them as a taxable benefit for ordinary commuting. This means most employees cannot use salary sacrifice in a way that reduces their tax or NI, making rail travel effectively excluded from genuine salary sacrifice schemes.

As a result, workers miss out on a simple, well-understood way to reduce commuting costs, despite government objectives to encourage public transport use and reduce car dependency.

We ask the Government to review and amend tax and benefit rules so that monthly and annual rail season tickets can be included in salary sacrifice arrangements that provide real tax and National Insurance savings, similar to other established schemes.

Allowing salary sacrifice for monthly or annual rail season tickets would:

1) reduce commuting costs without increasing wages
2) encourage public transport use and reduce car dependency
3) support environmental and congestion-reduction goals
4) give employers a simple, low-cost benefit to offer staff

This could save a commuter thousands every year!