What is salary sacrifice charging? A UK guide for 2025

If you have heard of salary sacrifice for electric cars but not for charging, you are not alone. It is a newer product built on the same principle, and this guide covers what it is, how it works, and what to check before setting it up.

The basic idea

Salary sacrifice is an arrangement where an employee agrees to give up part of their gross salary in exchange for a benefit, rather than receiving that amount as taxable cash pay. It is well established for pensions, cycle to work schemes, and, increasingly, electric car leasing.

Salary sacrifice charging applies the same principle to the cost of electricity used to charge an EV. Instead of the employee paying for charging out of their take-home pay, the cost is deducted from gross salary before income tax and National Insurance are calculated.

Why it exists

Electric car salary sacrifice schemes have made the car itself cheaper to run through pre-tax deductions, but they generally stop there. Charging costs, which for many drivers are the single largest ongoing running cost after the lease, are usually left completely out of the tax-efficient structure. Salary sacrifice charging closes that gap.

It matters most for the roughly nine million UK households without off-street parking, who cannot charge cheaply overnight at home and instead rely more heavily on the public charging network, now over 76,000 chargepoints, where costs per kWh are typically higher.

How the saving works

The saving is simply the combined income tax and employee National Insurance rate that applies to the amount sacrificed:

Tax band	Income tax	Employee NI	Total saving
Basic rate	20%	8%	28%
Higher rate	40%	2%	42%
Additional rate	45%	2%	47%

In practice, that means every £1 of charging costs an employee somewhere between 53p and 72p instead of the full £1, depending on their tax band. Employers also save employer National Insurance on the sacrificed amount, which is why the benefit typically has little to no net cost to run.

How it works in practice

1. The employee charges as normal, at home, at work, or via the 76,000+ public chargepoints reachable through the app and charge card, powered by Plugsurfing
2. Charging activity is pulled into a single monthly statement covering all locations
3. The employer receives payroll-ready figures and applies the deduction alongside existing salary sacrifice items
4. Income tax and National Insurance are calculated on the reduced gross salary

There is no separate expense claim process and no need to keep receipts.

Does it replace mileage reimbursement?

No. Salary sacrifice charging covers the cost of personal charging that the employee pays for through the scheme. If employees also need reimbursing for business mileage, that is a separate, HMRC-compliant process based on the Advisory Electricity Rate or actual costs, which is what our Reimburse product is built for. Keeping the two processes distinct matters for compliance.

Setting it up as an employer

The scheme bolts on to any existing EV salary sacrifice or company car arrangement, so there is no need to switch leasing provider. In practice, setup involves:

• Agreeing eligibility rules with HR and confirming the arrangement as a documented variation to the employment contract
• Adding a deduction line to payroll, with a floor check to ensure gross pay does not drop below National Minimum Wage
• Rolling out employee access, with onboarding and ongoing support handled outside day-to-day HR work

More detail is on the how it works page, with specifics for HR teams, finance and payroll and fleet and procurement.

Next steps

To see what the saving would be worth to your employees, try the savings calculator or book a demo to talk through setup.