Tax advice of the week: Sacrifice your salary
With benefit cuts for higher-earners and rising national insurance contributions, you might want to consider lowering your taxable pay by 'buying' perks from your gross salary.
National Insurance contributions on most employees' earnings rise from 11% to 12% next April and for those earning more than £43,888 a year from 1% to 2% on everything above that. So consider what you can "buy direct from your gross salary", says Ian Cowie in The Daily Telegraph.
Top-up pension payments are an obvious, but by no means only, use of salary sacrifice. Salary sacrifice can also buy childcare vouchers, lease cars for yourself and family members, and pay for medical insurance, or even a holiday.
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Alternatively, why not just buy yourself an extra week's holiday from your employer? suggests Richard Mannion of Smith & Williamson.
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