Staff Travel as a Contractural Benefit
We’ve had this discussion before. If it is a contractual benefit, then it will be taxed as a ‘benefit in kind’. This is the norm for HMRC, so, for example, many years ago when I worked in London, and my employer kindly gave me a loan so that I could buy an annual season ticket to get to work, the Revenue taxed me on an amount reckoned from the value of the interest that I would have had to pay if I had borrowed that money at a commercial rate from the Bank.
And on another occasion, when the Company graciously invited our respective Mehmsahibs to join us when we were at a meeting in one of the more attractive European cities, their airfares and a contribution to ‘their’ hotel costs were grossed up and we were taxed on this gross amount.
Any action by BASSA to claim Staff Travel is contractual is likely to have this unintended consequence: an unintended consequence, moreover, that is likely to affect all BA staff, as I cannot see HMRC allowing the existing rules to stay in place for any other categories of staff if the rules are changed for Cabin Crew.