Can EV Charging Be Salary Sacrificed?

Yes. EV charging can be salary sacrificed in the UK, in the same way as pension contributions, cycle to work and the car lease itself. It is less well known than those examples, but the mechanics are just as straightforward and the tax treatment is just as favourable.

Here is the short answer in full, and the detail behind it.

The short answer

An employee agrees to give up part of their gross salary each month in exchange for the electricity used to charge their electric car being paid for through the scheme. The sacrificed amount is deducted before income tax and National Insurance are calculated, so the employee pays less overall for the same electricity than they would from take-home pay.

This is a private arrangement between employer and employee, not something that requires new legislation. It uses the same salary sacrifice framework HMRC already recognises for other benefits, applied to a cost, charging, that almost every EV driver already has.

Why this is different from mileage reimbursement

Many employers assume the only option for EV running costs is mileage reimbursement using HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate, paid for business miles only. That is a real and useful mechanism, but it only ever covers business use, and it is a reimbursement of money the employee has already spent from taxed income.

Salary sacrifice charging is different: it covers the electricity cost itself, whether the charging happens for business or personal driving, and the tax saving is applied at the point the cost is incurred rather than refunded afterwards. The two are not competitors. Reimbursement of business mileage still needs to happen correctly and compliantly, which is exactly what our Reimburse product is built for, while salary sacrifice deals with the underlying charging cost.

What can be included

Home charging, using a smart meter or dedicated EV tariff reading
Workplace charging, where the employer has chargers on site
Public charging, across the 76,000+ chargepoints reachable through the app and charge card powered by Plugsurfing

Bringing all three into one gross deduction is the part that previously required manual expense claims and made the benefit impractical to administer.

What employers need to check

Before offering it, an employer should confirm:

Eligibility. Typically anyone driving a fully electric or plug-in hybrid company car, though schemes can be scoped more widely.
The minimum wage floor. Gross pay after the deduction must not fall below the National Minimum Wage.
Documentation. The sacrifice needs to be recorded as a variation to the employment contract, the same as any other salary sacrifice benefit.
Interaction with existing schemes. If the car already sits under an EV salary sacrifice or company car scheme, charging simply bolts on; there is no need to change lease provider.

What it saves

The saving is the employee's combined income tax and National Insurance rate on the amount sacrificed, roughly 28% at basic rate and up to 42% or more at higher rate. Employers save employer National Insurance on the same amount, which typically more than covers the cost of running the benefit. A full worked example by tax band is set out in how salary sacrifice charging works.

Is there a catch?

The main practical hurdle historically was not the tax rules but the admin: tracking charging across home, work and public locations well enough to calculate an accurate monthly deduction. That is the problem The Charge Scheme was built to solve, with an app and charge card that log usage automatically and turn it into a payroll-ready figure each month.