Salary sacrifice charging for company car fleets: a cost-saving guide

Most fleets already run an EV salary sacrifice scheme to get the car itself. Far fewer have thought about the cost of actually charging it. That is a missed saving for employees and, indirectly, a cost the business is still absorbing through mileage reimbursement and admin time.

Why fleets stop at the car

EV salary sacrifice schemes for the vehicle itself are well established: the lease is paid from gross salary, employer National Insurance is saved, and the employee gets a new EV for less than buying or financing one personally. Fleet and HR teams have largely solved this part.

Charging cost is usually left out of that arrangement. The driver pays for electricity out of their own take-home pay, at whatever rate their home tariff or the public network charges, with no tax relief at all. For a driver doing meaningful mileage, that is hundreds of pounds a year that could have been sacrificed just like the lease payment.

The saving on charging specifically

Charging cost sacrificed from gross pay saves the employee their combined income tax and National Insurance rate, typically 28% for basic rate taxpayers and 42% for higher rate. Employers also save employer National Insurance on the amount sacrificed, so the scheme is usually cost neutral or better for the business to run.

You can model this for your own fleet using the savings calculator.

Where it sits alongside the existing scheme

The Charge Scheme is designed to bolt on to whatever EV salary sacrifice or company car arrangement is already running, rather than replace it. There is no need to change lease provider or renegotiate the existing scheme. In practice that means:

• The vehicle lease continues to run exactly as it does today
• Charging is added as a second, separate salary sacrifice deduction
• Employees charge at home, at work, or on any of 76,000+ public chargers via the app and charge card, powered by Plugsurfing
• Payroll receives one additional deduction line alongside the existing lease deduction

Why this matters more for fleets than for single EV drivers

Fleets have visibility that individual drivers do not. A fleet manager can see charging patterns across dozens or hundreds of vehicles, which means the scheme's value compounds: every driver who is currently charging in public without any tax relief is leaving a saving on the table, and that adds up quickly across a fleet.

It also closes a fairness gap. Roughly nine million UK households have no off-street parking, so a meaningful share of any fleet's drivers cannot rely on cheap home charging and are paying public rates for most of their electricity. Salary sacrifice charging gives them the same tax relief as drivers with a driveway and a home charger.

What it takes to add to a fleet scheme

• Confirm eligibility rules alongside the existing EV scheme
• Add one deduction line to payroll
• Let The Charge Scheme handle employee onboarding and support

There is no cost to set up or run, and the process does not touch the underlying lease agreement. Fleet and procurement considerations are covered in more detail for fleet and procurement teams, and the payroll mechanics are set out for finance and payroll teams.

Keeping business mileage separate

Charging salary sacrifice covers personal charging cost. It is not the same as reimbursing business mileage, which for company cars follows HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate. Fleets that need to get that reimbursement right, with proper evidence per driver, should look at our Reimburse product, which automates that calculation.

Next steps

To see the numbers against your own fleet's mileage and EV uptake, book a demo and we will model it with you.